By the end of Fidel Castro's long life, what he actually said was not quite as important as the fact that he was still talking and writing, and therefore still alive. Years after he stepped down from power in communist Cuba, news of Castro almost always referred to his health condition and his dying eventually.
Castro's death was for decades an obsession for both critics, who saw it as a symbol for his regime to collapse, and his supporters, who were quick to deny anything had changed.
"I don't even remember what a headache is," Castro wrote in October 2012, when rumours were rife putting him at death's door. Comments on Twitter were again trying to prematurely "kill" the elderly Cuban, and Castro published photos of himself in the garden, using a cane and wearing the typically Cuban "guajiro" (peasant) hat.
The truth was that the public appearances of the once-omnipresent Castro were increasingly rare. The energetic leader in olive green fatigues had by the end of his life given way to a frail, elderly man in a tracksuit. After a serious intestinal condition led him to delegate power to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006, the former president was never again his old self.
In February 2008 he formally relinquished power. "I will not aspire to, neither will I accept [...] the position of president of the Council of State and commander in chief," Castro wrote. He stressed that he was not "saying goodbye" but announced that in the future he would be only a "soldier of ideas." Cubans soon got used to their old leader's new role. Long-feared for hours-long speeches, Castro discovered pen and paper in his old age.
The one-time energetic speaker became an analyst for Cuban state media, where he published more than 200 "Reflections" columns. These texts, often several pages long, were also read out on prime-time TV news programmes. And while his brother Raul Castro promoted reform to end state monopolies in many areas of Cuban economic life and eventually shook hands with US President Barack Obama in the Cuban capital in July 2015 to mark a revival of diplomatic ties with Washington, Castro turned to international politics and major issues that affect mankind as a whole.
Fidel Castro wrote about climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, international conflict and, above all, his longtime animosity towards the United States. Both due to his tone and to the way he recalled old conflicts like the Cold War, Castro came to often look like an anachronistic figure. Paradoxically, memories of Castro as an elderly man in a tracksuit will probably persist in collective imagination alongside his iconic image as a 1960s revolutionary.
In recent years, Castro several times appeared to recover from his health problems, but he never did so fully. "I no longer aspired to living," he told the Mexican daily La Jornada in 2010. At that time, he had appeared in public again and even went back to wearing green fatigues, as he met with artists, intellectuals and war veterans, granted TV interviews and attended Parliament.
However, it did not last. From 2011 his public appearances again became few and far between. In one of his writings, he apologized to Cubans for not attending a military parade ahead of the Cuban Communist Party Congress. "Believe me, it was painful for me to see that some of you were searching for me in the stands. I thought you would all understand that I can no longer do what I have so often done," Castro said.
Since then, he only rarely was seen in public, and his reflections became less frequent too. Several months of absence would be followed by new texts that the public took basically as confirmation that Castro was still alive. In March 2012 he was shown on worldwide television during the visit of then-pope Benedict XVI.
Later, he again appeared before the cameras when Raul Castro was re-elected for a second mandate. On that occasion, he looked like a visitor from another era, as he asked whether cell phones could also be used as voice recorders. Until the end of his life, Castro remained an icon for the Cuban regime, and the government issued photos of him with foreign dignitaries including presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil.