Cohen’s goodbye to Marianne

Leonard Cohen.Photo: Inge Gjellesvik / NTB / SCANPIX

Leonard Cohen (81) wrote a letter to his Norwegian ex-girlfriend Marianne Ihlen while she was lying on her deathbed in July this year.

Immediately after the Canadian singer, songwriter and author heard about her illness, he wrote a letter to her and sent it to her close friend Jan Christian Mollestad, who read it aloud to her, TT reports .

– It said, “So Marianne, we have come to the time when we have become so old that our bodies are falling apart, and I think I follow you very soon,”  Mollestad said to the Canadian radio station CBC Sunday.
Marianne Ihlen (81) passed away on Friday 28 July but the Norwegian woman is known worldwide through Cohen’s song “So long, Marianne.”

– Now I only wish you a good journey. Goodbye, old friend, writes Cohen in his letter.
After Ihlen had passed away,  Mollestad wrote a letter back to Cohen, where he told about parting with his friend.

– When we left her room after her soul had flown out the window in search of new adventures, we kissed her forehead and whispered your eternal words: “So long, Marianne,” said Mollestad.
Ihlen and Cohen met on the island of Hydra, and lived there in the ’60s. Leonard Cohen’s poetry book “Flowers for Hitler” from 1964 is also dedicated to Marianne Ihlen.

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today