A father, born in 1948 with a genetic disorder, reflects on his lifelong preoccupation with death, which he describes as "a sort of black tower that follows me." He recalls his first encounter with death at six years old in Florence, and his Catholic upbringing's distress over the idea of "going to Hell forever." Now older, he is less concerned by his own death than by his father’s, who recently had an irregular heartbeat, was hospitalized several times, and is waiting for surgery to get a pacemaker. The father, who started his career as a forensic pathologist, notes that "death is really the only thing that they don’t know." The happiest moments of his life were reading to his daughter, Gaia, when she was born, including simplified fairy tales and Dante’s *Inferno*, during which "the black tower completely vanished." He later wondered if dealing with his father’s death would be easier if there was "something out there, like a ghost or a presence," and then came across the idea of a dea.