2023-12-13 19:09:15
I didn’t want to write. I couldn’t and I think I almost can’t, it seems strange to me to name you in the past tense and I rebuke those elusive tears that insist on coming out because guys like you don’t believe in tears, they do believe in laughter and everything that suggests sovereign joy.
I didn’t want to write about Alberto Gutiérrez Walón and I’m writing and it’s hard for me, I swear. At this moment I surprise myself, as is normal, delving into so many yesterdays in which we shared work, dreams and hopes. A search in memory and details the colleague, the friend, the man who had an answer for everything and never knew fear.
It is difficult to schedule time and even when I try to do it, luckily for me you appear in my memories with that casual way, with your anecdotes and words and also swear words, but always cool, authentic.
Of the many anecdotes that come to mind, I couldn’t miss that one: coverage had ended and we needed a landline for a call looking for transportation, but someone was having a tremendous telephone rant… it was then that we began a dialogue alluding to a notorious dinner arranged in the nearby room and…of course, that person ended the call and we got away with our purpose. (The famous dinner thing hahaha, it was Walón’s idea and it turned out wonderfully for us)
A few years passed and we always remembered that day when we couldn’t stop laughing, although generally in each meeting we always had reasons for laughter to be present.
I don’t feel comfortable writing about you in this way, but not to do so would be disloyal to someone who always had a phrase of encouragement to not give shelter to sadness or discouragement.
It’s hard for me to say rest in peace, I prefer to say, fly high, well maybe you would correct me about the flight, and in your own way you would clarify for me: Keep going. Yes, keep going and wherever you go show that you are eternal, spread joy and revelry without limit.
I didn’t want to write but I can’t be an accomplice to sadness, as that song by Alberto Cortez says: “When a friend leaves/A fallen tree remains/That no longer sprouts again/Because the wind has defeated it.”
Taken from Radio Camoa
Cover photo: Alberto Gutiérrez Walón and Bolivia Tamara Cruz, first vice president of the UPEC
#Walón #Cubaperiodistas