Chapter 32 The Final Months of a Fighter
The first severe mood problems became visible after Piramedia had gone through a difficult period between 1995 and 1998. We saw overload, disappointment, and exhaustion. What we still too often tried to understand as a reaction to business pressure proved to be part of much deeper mental suffering. Bipolar disorder did not change who Marco was, but it did affect how he experienced hope, guilt, energy, and despair.
After our return from Egypt, he started again in the Glass Pyramid in Lummen. Computers were switched on, plans were resumed, and people began coming through the doors again. From the outside, it looked like a rebirth. As a father, I wanted to believe that new work would give him something to hold on to again. At the same time, the financial pressure and the fragile relationships around him remained. His energy could be impressive, but it was not the same as recovery.
During that period, there was also a painful confrontation with Nadia in which the police became involved. I mention this carefully, because everyone involved experienced that event through their own fear and grief. This book is not a courtroom. What I saw as a father was the distance around Marco growing at the very moment when he needed connection. He felt responsible, ashamed, and increasingly alone.
But deep inside me, a worry was growing too. It was as though Marco no longer allowed himself a single moment of rest. He worked day and night. He wanted to prove it was still possible. That our ideas still had a future. That all the work completed over the years had not been in vain. I admired his courage. But as his father, I began to worry more and more. Not because I doubted his abilities. Quite the opposite. I knew exactly what he was capable of. What worried me was the price he was paying. I saw fatigue in his eyes more and more often. He continued smiling. He continued making plans. But the exhaustion became increasingly difficult to hide. And yet he barely spoke about it. That was who he was. He wanted to solve every problem himself. He did not want to be a burden to anyone.
Not even to me. More than once, I tried to make him understand that he did not have to carry everything alone. That every human being has the right to admit when life becomes too heavy. But his answer was almost always the same. “Dad… let me keep trying a little longer.” Today, it is that one word - longer - that breaks my heart most of all. Longer. Because he truly did continue trying. He felt responsible not only for the success of our projects. He felt responsible for the people who worked beside him. The investments. The expectations. The promises he had made. And perhaps more than anything else… the dreams he himself had created. Looking back, I better understand how heavily that responsibility weighed on him.
Around 20 August 2009, Marco and I found each other again in a conversation. Not everything was resolved. Some words remained cautious, as though we were both afraid of placing too much weight on a fragile bridge. But beneath those words lay what had always been stronger than our differences: the bond between father and son. I loved him, and he knew it. He loved me, and I knew it. Since then, that certainty has been both my comfort and my wound. Our final connection was one of love; yet that love could not free him from the room in which his despair had locked him.
When I think back on those final months, I do not see defeat. I see how long he tried to keep going, often for everyone except himself. I wish I could have stopped him one more time, taken his face in my hands, and said, “Marco, you do not have to save anything today. No business, no dream, no one. Let us carry you.” That sentence came too late for his ears. That is why I write it now.