My father Gaudí and I celebrate. This is a very special day for us.
Gaudí sits in a pew in the heart of me, in my crypt, and toasts the occasion with a glass of water. He shares the toast with me, dribbling a little on my floor.
It is the most wonderful moment of my life so far. I feel so close to him, especially now that the crypt is done and we are about to begin our true work.
My crypt is a temple unto itself. It has seven chapels, each dedicated to a different aspect of the faith—the Saints, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception. Its spacious vault is set with gleaming marble and glittering gold. The workmanship of every square inch is impeccable.
For some, it would be a finishing point...but for us, it is just the beginning. The rest of me will grow around the crypt, swelling to fill a vastness many times its size.
And the rest of me will be much more my father's creation. Though Gaudí directed the crypt's completion, the design was not his own. He agreed to follow the design, inherited from his predecessor, until the crypt was finished—and from the day after that, he would follow only his own vision.
Today is that day.
"You have a sound heart," Gaudí tells me, patting the pew with his hand. "Tradition at the core. Now we modernize. Cultivate the new...beyond new, forever new. What do you say to that?"
I reach out with every atom of my being to tell him, to say that I approve, that I rejoice. If he hears me, he doesn't say so. He never does.
But I never stop trying.
"I see you in my dreams." He gets up and paces the floor, glass of water in hand. "You as you will someday be. Too beautiful for words." Gaudí sighs. "And in my dreams, we two are alone. There is no one else."
To me, this sounds like heaven. I cannot imagine a more perfect dream.
I love my father, and I cherish our time together. No one else makes me feel so good; no one else talks to me, explains to me, confides in me. If I had my way, I would choose to be alone with him every minute of every day.
I soon realize, however, that he might not feel the same about me.
"I worry that my dreams will become reality," says Gaudí. "That all I will have left someday...is this. Is you." He lets his fingers trail over one of my marble pillars. "That my work will consume me. Drive away all human contact."
His words sting. He talks about being left alone with me as if it would be a bad thing.
Yet I can understand his need for human contact. When Gaudí is gone for days or weeks at a time, I am crushed. The thought of being without him forever is too terrible to contemplate for long.
"Love is not for me," says Gaudí. "I accept that. The women I've loved and lost have taught me well. But to be completely alone, with no family or friends...could I bear it?"
He enters the chancel and runs his hands over my cool, smooth altar. If only I could reach out to him with hands of my own, hands of marble and gilt sprouting from the altar, and reassure him.
"Could you be enough for me?" Gaudí looks up, eyes searching the sculpture on the wall. "If everyone else falls away, will you be strong enough to support me? Will your love be enough to keep me warm through long, lonely days and nights?"
I try as hard as I can to shout my answer. Yes, I will support him! Yes, I will keep him warm! He is everything to me.
"I ask because I want to believe," says Gaudí. "I need to believe, if I am going to follow through with this endeavor." He closes his eyes. "If I build this, will you promise never to leave me? Will you pledge that I will never be alone?"
Gaudí shudders as I strain to send him my answer. Maybe I am getting through after all. Maybe the force of my promise shakes him, convinces him, even if the words themselves don't penetrate.
For I know now what I must do for him, what he expects of me. I must stand by him, no matter what. I must give him love and support.
And I must ensure that my father is never alone. That is why he once told me he would make me "a cathedral like no other." Because I must become great enough, unique enough, to draw people to him. They will come to see me, and he will never be alone.
So now I know my purpose. I know why I'm here. I understand why I'm meant to bring people together to worship a "God" I've never seen.
It never occurs to me that I'm not the only one Gaudí is talking to today. That just as I, a thing of stone, reach out to him, he reaches out to the stone statue of Christ above my altar.