Remembering Ove Berthelsen

Illuusa Ove Berthelsen Tallimanngorneq Tannaartumi eqqissisunnguuvoq, uppernanngikkaluassusia taamak inuttanngua pissaaneqartigisimasoq.

Ove Berthelsen is dead. It was Good Friday when he left.

For months, we’d spoken about afterlife options, of what comes after.

Ove had that primal dread of death that's bone-deep in us all, but he saw beyond that too.

He figured time wasn't a straight shot, and the world was more than three dimensions. Walking to the legendary Angakkussarfik, the Shaman's College, the place of transparency and inner wisdom in the outskirts of Qeqertarsuaq, he'd tell me how the barriers, even between the living and the dead, were all in our heads.

He never pictured the afterlife as some idyllic garden or endless joy. He imagined it as ultimate freedom — from gravity, from the labels and limits we strap on ourselves, from being seen at all, if that’s what you wanted. Light as down, he’d said.

We’d spend endless hours walking between the ancient volcanic rocks and the giant icebergs, him talking, me listening. I’ve got tapes of his thoughts, hours' worth.

Now he's out there, somewhere above, looking down.

Now, he observes us from a vantage point we imagine aloft.

People say the dead change in our sight, their looks, their smiles shift. I don't buy it. Ove's face, his grin, they're the same to me as they ever were. And his voice — it's here, strong as the gales over the Qeqertarsuaq’s endless ice.

Ove Berthelsen-ip eqqaaneqarnera ataqqinartuuli