the essential
In her book “Dear Dad, I went for a walk”, Bessy Selk tells the moving story of Benoît, her “son”. Suffering from schizophrenia, Ben ended his life at Agen station on January 20, 2015. He was 24 years old.
“There are announcements that do not need a black border so that we can guess the content.” The clock at the Agen police station marks 11:40 p.m. on January 20, 2015. Bessy Selk is not at the station as part of her professional journalistic activity. Benoît, his son, has disappeared. He’s been looking for him since the beginning of the evening.
A little earlier, when he came home, he did not find the traditional little reassuring note where it is written: “Dear Dad, I went for a walk”. However, the message is placed on the kitchen table every time his son decides to take a walk. He also did not receive a phone call or text message. Unusual. And worrying. Ben, 24, suffers from schizophrenia.
After having put together several scenarios, alerting his colleagues and searching all of Agen, he was at the police station on January 20, 2015, almost 10 years ago, when, at 11:40 p.m., he heard this sentence which sounded like an announcement: “The inspector will see you.” His son ended his life at Agen station around 3:45 p.m. “No need for a drawing,” he wrote, “of these sketches to illuminate this kind of scene to understand how it unfolded.”
“Two oppressive anxieties, merging and supporting each other”
Ten years after this tragedy, Bessy Selk self-published “Dear Dad, I went for a walk”. More than a poignant testimony to the tragic fate of his “son” and a work of memory, this book is a pure declaration of love from a father to his son. He wrote it to free himself but also for Thibaud and Thomas, his two other children and for all those who have a loved one trapped in the whirlwind of psychological disorders, for all those who suffer.
With touching modesty and without ever hiding his flaws, Bessy Selk traces the chaotic journey of an endearing Ben with a talent for drawing. Unhappiness, dropping out of school, depression, isolation, the announcement of schizophrenia on March 27, 2012, but also the joyful evening of his 20th birthday, the hopes and a few enchanted parentheses, he reveals the “succession of failures and impossible-to-achieve dreams which inevitably darkened the horizon even further.” He also makes no secret of the suffocating spiral in which they were both. “His anxiety penetrated me to the highest point and nourished mine, which he imbued in return… which made his own rise. Two oppressive anxieties, merging and supporting each other.”
A real journalistic investigation
The last part of the work is the fruit of a true journalistic investigation served by the silky pen that he always had. He wanted to “sew up the thread of Benoît’s life and reconstruct his time on earth, resuming the paths he took”. He was keen to know everything in order to understand better.
“I absolutely wanted to know, bluntly, even bluntly, what state my son was in just before and what had become of him afterward.” This freediving in this file highlights the last second of Ben’s life, his final gesture in front of the train.
“Dear Dad, I went for a walk” finally allows us to raise awareness of the National Union of Families and Friends of Sick and/or Mentally Disabled People. Unafam provides valuable help to families going through hell. Bessy is now a volunteer within this association.
