As a child, whenever I was sad, my mother would say: “Don’t cry sweetheart, save your tears for later”. I’m not certain how my naive ears interpreted the words back then, but I know they didn’t carry the ominous and fatidic charge they do now. Freshly unfamiliar with the depths life can plunge you into, I guess I didn’t understand them. To me, a notorious daydreamer, the future could only be better and more exciting, surely ever improving. So I must have missed the notion of an adult life that would require the amassing of tears, or else dismissed it. Although the words were spoken with infinite tenderness, and I strongly recall feeling the love that spurred them, I believe telling a child to save her tears for when she grows up is objectionable in more than one way. Beside setting the stage for a future full of sorrow, it implies that her youthful sadness is too unimportant to cry over.

I’ve done that all my life, look ahead, expecting goals to be achieved, a name to be made, the perfect home to be found, our wonderful life to be even more perfect. Until all of a sudden, you were gone and life collapsed. Only recently did I learn (still learning, really) to truly live in the present; your death helped, forced me to. I always thought it was good to be one step ahead. But it never is, not when it comes to living. The step ahead might never come, and as you peer ahead, you miss this very moment, which is all we really have. Being present, here and now. Words that can be heard so often these days, they have turned into a cliché. But just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true. A growing number of people seem very intent on teaching us this axiom, practically shoving it down our throats. Despite the jarring fashionableness of spirituality, something many businesses have eagerly latched onto, I think they have a point, and I suppose the idea has become ubiquitous because it’s time we learn. Or, in fact, re-learn. For ourselves and for the world.

This not only means taking the time (in fact, sitting down and meditating on it is not even needed, you can do it while running errands or slaving at your 80-hour-a-week job, though, as a side effect, you’ll automatically start wondering why you run or work so much) to be in the moment, it also means be in our bodies and listen to what nature has to tell us. She is a great but soft-spoken teacher. Silence and serenity are needed for hearing her.

You used to have great faith in Western medicine, but I think it provided you with an excuse for ignoring your body. Pills were your principal panacea, as they are for the majority of people in the Western world. Because of our myopic way of viewing health, or rather, disease, we act only when something is wrong and set out to treat the malady or compromised immune system or ailing organ, which has often taken quite some time to develop or deteriorate, while our body sent us messages we ignored. Everything is connected, and if we learn to truly take care of and pay attention to our bodies and the world around us, which are inextricably linked, I’m convinced we can prevent many diseases.

To me, Western medicine, though brilliant in isolated instances, suffers from the band-aid-for-a-bullet-wound syndrome. It could benefit immensely from a paradigm shift, focusing on how to keep people healthy instead of cure a disease, but of course the pharmaceutical’s revenue model gets in the way of that. Very in the way, and, I suspect, deliberately.

The COVID-19 crisis clearly proved this. The entire world, well, the so called ‘developed’ world at least, was looking to a vaccine as the sole solution to get us out of lock-down, to return to life as it was before the pandemic. Not disregarding the brilliancy of the scientists who are able to create this kind of protection, and realizing it can be a life-saving tool in rare instances, in this case I think it was an attempt at another quick fix for our fundamentally distorted way of dealing with health, the environment and our food.

Plentiful were the articles regarding the development of a vaccine, rare the ones focusing on more natural cures or immunity boosting herbs or foods. If those managed to reach the mainstream media at all, they were rapidly dismissed as quackery. Another news coverage lacuna during the corona-crisis should have been taken up by a discussion of underlying problems or causes, like how air pollution makes people more vulnerable for getting seriously ill from COVID-19 and plenty other respiratory diseases, like asthma. On the website of the Dutch Lung Foundation I discovered that the number of people who died prematurely every year of bad air quality was comparable to the amount of deaths by COVID-19 in its first year.

Factory farming employs massive amounts of antibiotics to treat healthy animals that we regard and treat as products, creating widespread resistance in bacteria and an ideal environment for the development of virulent pathogens. Instead of looking critically at the way we use, or rather abuse, animals, we forego their well-being in favor of our insatiable lust for meat and dairy by incarcerating too many in too little space, and, as soon as a new virus appears on the scene, like the bird flu virus that’s going around in many countries right now, we lock up the free-range ones as well.

The way we deal with this kind of threat reflects our irrational and destructive fear. In the news, we hear of wild birds being the culprits (a preposterous and perilous notion), and we read about millions of deaths among farm birds. Contrary to what headlines like,”raging avian flu destroys nearly a million farm birds in Alberta”, lead us to believe, this massacre is not caused by the virus. Panicked governments order farmers to destroy their entire flock if one of the chickens or other birds tests positive for the virus. I know I am not the only one who thinks this way of dealing with animals is utterly insane, but why is this genocide still happening? How can we accept and justify this? These measures are merely taken out of fear for our own health, since a virus will not wipe out the entire bird population, as COVID-19 did not wipe out all of humanity. Considering the way we deal with nature and other living creatures on this planet, I almost wish it had.

Now that we’ve returned to ‘normality’, and the vaccine has proven less, or at least no more, of a solution than the development of natural immunity among humankind, we can go back to focus on all the other diseases that have never left us, like cancer, cardio-vascular diseases and depression. Even though the latter has been on the rise for quite some time, the corona-crisis made it increase exponentially. I’m deliberately saying the corona-crisis, not the virus itself, because I believe it was the fear and the fear-based measures that helped tumble many people into a dark hole from which they couldn’t see a livable present or future.

Knowing the way you placed your trust in Western medicine, I figure you’d probably be more inclined to accept the new vaccine. We might have had differing opinions, but it wouldn’t have been a problem. We were able to disagree, that was the kind of relationship we had. During the pandemic situation, an acquaintance indignantly accused me of distrusting the motives of health professionals. Having doubts concerning a vaccine that was created in record time, doesn’t imply a suspicion of foul play, it is merely an acknowledgment of the possibility for human error. Healthcare is not exact science and the workings of the body are still largely a mystery to us; we simply cannot foresee what consequences injecting altered mRNA or even a disabled pathogen into a body, bypassing the ‘normal’ route, will have. It’s another example of our myopic view of health, where we fail to look at the entire picture, or body, in this case.

Physicians, scientists, nurses, all with the best intentions and like everyone else, make mistakes or decisions based on incomplete or faulty knowledge. It’s inevitable, since our cerebral knowledge of the human physique is limited. Each and every one of us, however, has the ability to know our body fully, on a very different level. Throughout my life, I’ve seen this principle forcefully confirmed. You know I come from a family of doctors (once was a time I wanted to become one myself), and my father was a dedicated and brilliant OBGyn. You admired him, and sometimes unfavorably compared yourself to him, but you were no less brilliant, be it in a different way. My father made important contributions to the treatment of infertility and his patients adored him. But he wasn’t infallible. Because of a slight acne problem during my teenage years, he prescribed a contraceptive pill. It wasn’t until I turned about twenty-one that I realized that the depressed moods were not part of my own constitution and that my metabolism wasn’t slow. As soon as I stopped taking the Diane-35 my moods improved and balanced out and I lost excess weight I never put on again. My father was a great physician, and there was no doubt he meant the very best for me, but I finally listened to my body and drew my own conclusions. And I was right.

Less than a month before you suddenly passed away, my mother almost did as well. The oncologist who treated her was convinced that the spot in her lungs heralded adenocarcinoma. In order to confirm this suspicion, the radiologist took a biopsy, which almost proved fatal, causing massive pulmonary bleeding. After her recovery, the result of the biopsy revealed it wasn’t malignancy, but an innocent topical infection. During my mother’s treatment, two major mistakes were made by her specialist doctors, one of which instilled unwarranted fear and worry in her and us, the other of which almost killed her. A quick aside: the biopsy gone wrong landed my mother in the IC of the hospital (hooked up to a ventilator!), but she was ushered out as soon as she was no longer in immediate danger, because, yes, the IC was working at overcapacity. This was December 2019, but I checked for previous years, and it’s the rule for every fall and winter. During that time of year, Dutch intensive care units are usually fully occupied with an overworked staff. It only takes a quick Google-search to find articles corroborating this, revealing this is the seasonal situation in many countries.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572116

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/02/13/toronto-hospital-flu/

https://www.france24.com/en/20170111-french-hospitals-cancel-operations-amid-brutal-flu-epidemic

https://nos.nl/artikel/2084678-ziekenhuizen-hebben-handen-vol-aan-grieppatienten

https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/griepseizoen-winter-20142015-zwaarder-en-langer-dan-voorgaande-jaren

The third miscalculation by a doctor in that fateful December month did prove fatal. To you. I’m positive the cardiologist who examined you and told us not to worry didn’t mean for you to die. I am sure he thought he was treating you in the best way possible, sending you home with blood thinners. But we should have been concerned, very much so, since you did die. This doctor made the catastrophic mistake of not keeping you for more extensive examination, instead once again going for the band-aid solution: pills.

I bear no grudge against this cardiologist, I feel no anger towards him and I’ve never considered suing. But I don’t think you’d blame me for not blindly accepting whatever a health professional says. Your body, the only true health authority, knew something was terribly wrong, and it either didn’t tell us loudly enough or we didn’t listen. Or perhaps we were simply too afraid of its message.

My second novel bears an eerie resemblance to the current state of the world. This in itself is not surprising; I’m sure a great body of written work and other art will grow out of the COVID-19-induced situation, and literature, as everything else, will forever be shaped and colored by it.

But I was working on this book in 2019, when the word ‘pandemic’ was still largely the fodder of science fiction, and you were still physically next to me. As my only alpha-reader, you read most of the material that now lies dormant inside my bright orange flash drive, and I’m so grateful you did. You were the best alpha-reader I could’ve wished for: honest but sympathetic to my fragile writer’s ego and so supportive. No matter how busy you were, you always made the time to read my work and do it with your full attention. Lacking a literary background, your criticism was spot on.

Your death and all it entailed temporarily paralyzed my creativity and writing muscle. I became a functional zombie barely capable of going through the motions of daily life, so the novel and all my other writing were put on hold while the pain I felt wriggled its way out and grew into these letters. The inciting incident was a disaster that would become COVID-19, something about which I so desperately want to tell you. You were always the very first one I would talk to, even when it concerned our relationship (no one can accuse us of not communicating enough), and it is still so hard to stomach I can’t anymore. I have not found a substitute for you as a confidant and my preferred collocutor, and it’s highly doubtful I ever will.

If you were to miraculously come back, I could’ve told you that the story of my dystopian novel became a reality. I’d tell you how, in addition to my time suddenly being gobbled up by home schooling our two children (or rather, creating a space for them to attend online classes, and waiting on them), I had no idea how to handle my work-in-progress. What to do with a science fiction story that has turned into science reality? These strange days, what novelty is there in describing a world where all human beings are living in isolation, communicating with each other solely through digital means? Life had truly shown itself to be at least as strange as fiction.

Tom Wolfe, whose novel The Bonfire of the Vanities I only recently picked up to read, in his introduction talks about how he experienced this same phenomenon in 80’s New York and how it was a reason for many writers of that period to renounce the realistic novel and set out to create more experimental work. His analysis of that situation, and reading about how he was confused and frustrated when the fictional events he created were echoed by real ones immediately after, fortified my spirits and helped ease some of the doubts concerning my own imagination.

The world of my paused novel is not the same as the one we currently inhabit, but the similarities are disturbing ones, like growing division and the increasing amount of control the powers that be are allowed to exert over our bodies and privacy. And as time advances and the pandemic situation, regardless of the question whether it’s natural or manufactured, only barely releases its grip on our lives, animosity and polarization, especially in the Western world, are taking on grimmer hues. Blessedly unfamiliar with war, I believe I do descry some of its instigating mechanics.

What’s happening?

Well, fear of death, for one thing. Fear of losing control, which has been an ailment of Western society for a long time, is reaching an all time high. These two fears are closely related by the way, since death is the ultimate loss of control, as both you and I can attest to.

I realize how hard it is to lead a country when the killer virus that scientists have been anticipating for such a long time, prepping our minds to see it coming, has finally arrived. How do you deal with a pathogen we know nothing about and might just wipe out half of humanity? You freak out, of course.

So I understand the initial nervous decision of locking people up in their houses and making them wear face masks in public; a virus travels from one person to the next and is successful when it infects as many people as possible, a lesson we learned in biology class. However, another thing we learned from studying viruses is that they don’t benefit from killing their host, thereby limiting the scope of transmission.

It’s more than a year-and-a-half since the first bout of corona-panic passed over the world like the blast wave of a nuclear explosion. You’d think that by now, we would have created a sustainable, wise way of dealing with this fairly unfatal pathogen (you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that still calls COVID-19 a killer-virus anymore), but I’m sorry to tell you we haven’t. Governments still resort to isolating people, enforcing them to wear face masks while in public spaces and curtailing already disabled businesses, as the nth wave of the delta, omicron or any other damned letter of the Greek alphabet variant washes over the numbed populace.

Only one significant development can be discerned since the very first meeting with this virus-in-a-crown: a partially effective vaccine that is still in its experimental stage. And now this half-done instrument is held aloft as the ultimate and only solution out of this mess. At the same time, however, it functions as a crowbar, psychologically cleaving a humanity that’s already divided physically and whose overall situation is quite precarious anyway, largely of its own doing.   

I see many of our friends, intelligent people that I hold in high esteem, gripped by fear: fear of ending up on an ICU, fear of being turned away from ICU’s and not having access to medical resources, fear of death, fear of losing loved ones. In relation to this virus, it’s an irrational fear, since the overwhelming majority, if infected by it, only come down with a mild to moderate flu. On the other side of the divide is a much smaller but nonetheless significant group, the people who fear the loss of freedom and physical sovereignty.

Like the twin sister moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, fear and panic make many otherwise sensible people resort to unreasonable and polarized statements, and it’s suddenly very easy to relinquish basic and unalienable human rights. Name calling has become rampant: people who are pro-vaccination are called sheep and the ones against are called crazies or anti-vaxxers. We get a thorough glimpse of how thin the veneer of civilization really is.

My American friends have been so (understandably) traumatized by the past presidency of Mr Trump, some seem to have lost the ability to see nuances when it comes to corona, and with a heavy heart I see them resort to the same shaming and blaming they so loathed in this flagrant and destructive president. Ask any American about their political preference, and you know how they stand in the vaccination discussion. How can it be that simple? In Holland, the situation is less clear cut, but I see how the extreme right-wing parties that both you and I used to scoff at are now voicing some of my sentiments. Fortunately the party I’ve voted for the past years, the Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) tends to evade the tired and outworn division into left and right, and they too are opposed to enforced vaccination.  

Facebook and other social media are only aggravating this process of division. Instead of offering a platform for nuanced discussion, something it never was, of course, it has become the equivalent of a town square where people go for a brawl, to vent their anger and frustration and hang out with other like-minded individuals to unite against people who have differing opinions. It also turned into a big brother-like instrument where every post containing the word “COVID-19” or “corona” is followed by a warning.

Not only US friends are prone to polarization, some of our Dutch friends suddenly seem to hold far-reaching views when it comes to people who choose not to be vaccinated against COVID-19. One of them posted on FB, his words dripping with anger: “it’s real simple. If you don’t take the vaccine, you’re the last to receive medical care.” Some years ago, this particular friend fell off his bicycle and smashed up his face, landing him in the ER. A serious drinker, he happened to be plastered when the curb had suddenly seemed way too close for comfort. Clearly, the accident was a result of his own irresponsibility, but he received medical attention, just like everyone else in that ER. The fact is, many people who refuse the vaccine take very good care of themselves, accepting full responsibility for their own health. So, I wonder, should a heavy smoker who’s fully vaccinated get priority over a non-smoker who’s not? This sounds wrong to me, and I know you would agree. The whole discussion about whether anyone should get priority when it comes to medical attention is a tricky one, of course, as it has always been.

The argument used ad nauseam by the government and the largest part of the population, that you take the vaccine to protect others, doesn’t hold water, as the jab has proven not to prevent transmission. Our daughters and me, we have done PCR tests until we were blue in the face, and every single test came up negative. After a visit to our fully vaccinated family, the next day they called to warn us that one of them had fallen ill with COVID-19 and that we should watch for symptoms or do a test. The girls and me, we remained clear, but it just added to the feeling of backwardness of it all.

Spain is about to regard COVID-19 as a regular flu, meaning they stop monitoring the number of infections, and I believe it’s about time, but it’s still one of the very few countries to have the guts to take this step. I don’t understand why governments massively disregard the psychological and economic damage inflicted by the lockdowns; a damage sustained by everyone, but substantially more by the less affluent in this world. Large companies, often having a very strong online presence, don’t suffer nearly as much as the smaller businesses and the creative industry (I sometimes wonder, will there be any theater, dance performances, concerts, left when the people in power finally decide to end it?) and the combination of online classes with work from home is infinitely more stressful for families with limited means.

The use of facemasks, a seemingly innocent but at the same time ridiculously ineffective measure, has already developed into a new environmental disaster, since we humans tend to put ourselves first, no matter what, forgetting that earth is our habitat and we are the environment. Children, forced to wear these masks in class, have trouble concentrating. A cashier I met the other day was complaining about nausea caused by the obligatory face cover she was to wear all day, impeding her vision and causing disorientation. Yet another way humanity pollutes this planet, the masks can be found in parking lots, in forests and in the ocean; and how about the brand-new garbage pile created by the many millions of disposable corona-tests?

Contrary to what people might expect, in Ibiza, the majority of permanent residents lead healthy lives. Many of them don’t see the need to ‘get the jab’. Island life is more relaxed, especially in winter, when it gently forces one to slow down. This relaxation was visible in you as well, when it was still the four of us residing here. Corona isn’t front page news anymore, and people go about their lives almost like they did before. Here, I feel less alone in my reluctance to get vaccinated, less cornered, although the influence of an 85 % vaccinated Holland can be felt in messages from family and friends. Robin’s Dutch teenage friends are all vaccinated and they burden her with tales of guilt and downsized freedom. If it weren’t for her Ibiza friends, many of whom remain unvaccinated, she might have insisted on getting it, not out of conviction but out of opportunism. And to me, that feels wrong, especially with a technology that’s so new.

I’d like to speak to you about how it’s possible that people are still so dead set upon everyone getting the vaccine, blaming the unvaccinated for the overflowing ICU’s, a notion that has proven to be false. When I see the Dutch secretary of Health Hugo de Jonge appear on a late night talk show lustily stirring up the furnace of disharmony, I understand. He’s joined by old and crabby Johan Derksen. A mere soccer commentator, I’m not sure what made Derksen turn into a COVID-19 authority all of a sudden, but he can’t wait to get his filthy, cigar-stained hands on those nasty anti-vaxxers. “I think we are way too kind to these people”, he whines on national television. Of course, this man has always been the personification of discord.

As with the inadequacy of the vaccine, the fact that ICU’s have been overtaxed every single winter simply doesn’t seem to register. I discuss this with people, but it gets old. Corona or the vaccine or the next wave are not exactly inspiring conversational topics and people get antsy, as do I. Some even get angry or downright abusive when I voice my doubts about this new mRNA technology and it’s a topic I tend to avoid. There is no one I can talk to like I did to you; you were willing to see my way while adhering to your own viewpoints. With you, I lost my touchstone, my haven, where I could safely utter and investigate and develop my ideas before tossing them out into the world. My letters to you should be read by you first (if not by you alone), before I make them public, but now, they face the world naked and imperfectly pristine, possibly containing faulty or hurtful elements.

Our final exchange (oh had I but known that it was, I’d have poured out my heart and soul to you all night, saying everything I wanted you to hear) about a restaurant for New Year’s Eve and the insomnia of our daughter, was over two years ago. In order to take away the worry I saw in you, I told you I was sure your heart was fine. Once in a while, I still ask you forgiveness for that lie born out of ignorance, but you never reply.

Perched on a promontory of Punta Galera, the exact place where, seven months ago, she held your cinders in her long-fingered hands to entrust them to the dark waters, your Birdy had a pensive moment amidst a weekend of elated happiness. Hands on hips in her own peculiar way, elbows pointing backwards, I noticed this stance made her long arms look like wings. As I beheld her looking out over the sea, I tried to divine her thoughts. Was she contemplating her future as a sixteen-and-up individual, relishing the nearness of her friends, or simply letting her mind take a rest from the extended celebrations? Whatever it was, you must have been a part of it. I couldn’t tell if she was in pain, but she didn’t seem to require my help or comfort, so I let her be.

Your daughter, who so resembles you but at the same time is her own person more than anyone I know, has reached the momentous age of sixteen. Halfway on her way to legal adulthood, she can now officially quit school and get any body part pierced without my permission. Had we been in America, she’d be able to get her driver’s license, and the strangest thing is, that doesn’t even seem far-fetched anymore. Our once socially awkward and shy little girl is growing into a radiating human being: she is strong, independent and gorgeous. A force to be reckoned with.

Alas, we are not in California, so she won’t be driving a car for some time, and although Ibiza is treating us well, it isn’t Overveen either, where Robin would have hopped on her bicycle to be with her pals and celebrate reaching this landmark age, roam the streets of Haarlem and hang out at their school. Holland isn’t exactly in a festive place at the moment, with its recent lock-down and talk of mandatory vaccinations, but it’s home to one of the most important elements in her life right now: friends. Like her sister, our big girl isn’t a complainer, and only once did she voice the wistful realization she’d be celebrating her sixteenth birthday without her posse.

So as I was straining to figure out what gift would be special enough to honor this sweet age, a gift extraordinary enough to make the absence of her father on this day less prominently present, a crazy idea popped into my head. Facilitated by the rock bottom prices of Transavia tickets, together with Leone I conjured up a scheme to get Robin what we believed would make her even happier than a Tony Stark Funko pop : her friends.

At first, the idea seemed too wild to catch on, but after repeatedly prodding the collective helter-skelter teenage mind of the Whatsapp group Leone had created, we ended up with a batch of three amazing girls, who went out of their way to get a day off from school to embark upon this adventure. In cooperation with the high school in Haarlem and the girls’ parents, the whole plan seemed to materialize successfully when the deteriorating COVID-19 situation in Holland threatened to prevent it. All of us were so excited by the prospect of the ultimate surprise party, we awaited the press conference, in which the Dutch government would reveal the new measures for curbing the spread of corona, in uneasy anticipation. New measures were indeed installed, but when we learned that travel remained free from obstructions I heaved an emphatic sigh of relief.

Robin’s birthday started off quietly wonderful. We gave her one gift, with the promise that after school, in the afternoon, more would follow, and Leone handed her a special version of one of her famous flap book birthday-card fabrications, displaying some of Robin’s favorite actors: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, and of course, the only possible Loki: Tom Hiddleston. All Marvel actors, of course. Do others exist?

The sun was out (not a given on our Birdy’s birthday, it being the 2^nd of December) and she went off to school in cheerful spirits. During the day, I had my work cut out for me, prepping a party cum sleepover that, unbeknownst to Robin, would have to accommodate not merely our tiny family, but an additional five.

After school, we went home to pick up where we left off in the morning. Leone and I struggled to hide our steadily increasing excitement as the arrival time of her friends’ flight drew nearer. While we were having our threesome party, the accompanying parents loaded the band of exuberant girls into the rental car and headed over to our house. In the meanwhile, the presents Robin unwrapped were all very well received, and she was serenely happy with how her birthday turned out. She seemed very content and for a brief moment I wondered whether it had been a good idea to invite her friends over; I’d be throwing everything into disarray, moreover since the following week she was facing exams. But I dismissed these qualms, my once high-strung ambition regarding tests and grades having alleviated gradually since … well, perhaps since you passed away?  

As an apparent conclusion for her day, we put on a Marvel movie, something Leone and I thought would be an excellent stage for the arrival of the mystery guests. So when we finally received word the gang from Holland were in the vicinity, Leone, who had a sudden need to use the bathroom, in reality snuck out the back door to welcome the travelers. Everyone who was familiar with the plan wanted to see Robin’s face as she discovered who was at the door, so Leone had been assigned the function of camera woman. 

I went into the kitchen ‘to make tea’, leaving Robin nearest to the front door. So when the tentative and highly anticipated knock could finally be heard, me asking her to get it was obvious. “No idea who’s there, probably Pepe, the gardener. To wish you a happy birthday”, I chuckled, since he has a tendency to knock on our door at odd times, though not usually in the evening.

When Robin opened the door, she was beyond surprised. Her knees literally buckled with perplexity and she couldn’t believe her own eyes. But after the first seconds of stupefaction, delirious and emotional joy set in. The girls couldn’t stop hugging and jumping and laughing. It was magnificent and their happiness was like a wave engulfing everyone present.

So what appeared to be a nice but quiet cinematic end of her sixteenth birthday turned into an endorphin-powered party with dancing, singing and laughing. During a time where partying has become all but illegal, this kind of elation was greatly overdue and so welcome.

The girls stayed for the weekend, and every moment, whether we were showing them Ibiza’s natural wonders, having breakfast at Rita’s Cantina and tapas at El Zaguan, discovering Ibiza town, or simply on our way in the car, was bliss. Organizing it took a lot of time and preparation, but few of the things I’ve done in my life have been more worth it. It was Robin’s birthday, but the undiluted joy, not just in her, but in her wonderful friends as well, was my greatest gift.

Strangely enough, it was the first birthday since your death I didn’t approach with a sense of dread. I guess the whole operation help keep it at bay, but I hope (or do I?) it is an enduring change. As I was dragging the group of friends across the island, however, despair found me a few times. Setting them free to solve the Sherlock-puzzle in the town of Ibiza, mesmerized by their elation, my lonely gait away from them was heavy with your absence. How different, how lovely, would it have been to while away our time together, meandering the cobbled streets, having some coffee or lunch, waiting for these promising kids to find the perpetrator in their Cluedo-like quest. To relish their glee together. Oh how I yearned for you, my drawn heart paving the streets of Ibiza town.

And Punta Galera of course, will forever speak of you.  As I watched Robin listen to it, one of her friends, an intelligent and beautifully kind girl, stood next to me. Since she is familiar with the kind of pain Robin might be feeling (her own mother passed away four-and-a-half years ago) I told her that this was the place where we dispersed your ashes. Robin had told her, and briefly we spoke about her own life without a mother. She said that for a long time, it had been hard for her to show her sorrow, seeing her Dad so devastated. I read about this in the how-to-deal-with-loss book someone gave me when you died, and recognize it in our children, and as much as I tried to give them space to express their own grief, I think something similar happened in our household.  

I asked how it felt for her now. After contemplating the question a moment, she said, with tears in her eyes: “It changes. But it doesn’t really get better.”
Her answer made me sad, but in my heart I knew she was right, and I realized I have been telling our daughters a lie. It doesn’t get better. How can it? The only way it could, is if you would magically reappear. If, as a birthday surprise for Leone’s sixteenth birthday, I would manage to conjure up you.

It wasn’t until the very instant I beheld the tiny jellybean that would become Robin snugly nestled in my uterus, the momentous occasion of our first ultrasound, I could see myself as a mother. To care for another creature with the intensity that’s needed to care for one’s own children didn’t seem like something I was capable of. I didn’t (and still don’t, honestly) see myself as altruistic enough for mustering that amount of unlimited patience and care. On the pragmatic side, I simply dreaded the responsibility. The loss of freedom. The loss of solitude, a critical commodity for a loner like me. It was thanks to you, for you, and most of all, with you, that I changed my mind.  As someone with a much greater capability for caring and multitasking and an infinitely more social constitution, I knew you’d take on at least half of the burden and be a doting father.

I was right on all counts. You were devoted to the point of still wanting to tie Robin’s shoelaces when she was ten and I struggled with combining my newborn maternal dedication and the preservation of a minuscule sliver of freedom. You saw my struggle and helped me as much as you could, stepping in to guard my space, taking over with ease. News of a father unable to be alone with his children because they were too much for him we’d contemplate with pity and a hint of disdain. Your talent for caring, for our children and me, was of vital importance to me. But then you decided to leave. You left me to raise our two daughters alone, and to execute all our plans without you. This was not the deal we made.

Last month, after vacating our house, we had nowhere to go. We couldn’t go to America yet and no longer had a home in the Netherlands. Without children, this unpredictable situation would have been infinitely easier to deal with. I had prompted the school in America to expect Robin and Leone at the start of the school year. At first, I had to delay their arrival a few weeks, but when my visa still hadn’t shown any signs of materializing at the time of our move, I had to come up with a serious plan B. So we headed back to Ibiza, to let the girls spend a trimester in a school they already knew from the time we lived here as an unbroken family, and to stay in the house that had been our home before.

As always, the island has welcomed us, and Ibiza defies the definition Plan B, but not going to the US now presents me with another dilemma. Since the initial plan had been to go for one schoolyear, what do I do? Do I extend the time in the US into the following schoolyear? This means I squander any possibilities for the kids to go back to their excellent and wonderful school in Holland. Should I just let them finish this schoolyear on Ibiza and forget about the US altogether? I know I will always regret this. Had I been alone, these crushing doubts would have been non-existent. Others would have risen, probably, but they would not have had such grave consequences for others than myself. My dependents. The legal language concerning the visa says it clearly. Los Angeles will be our home, even if it turns out to be for only half a school year. I’ve chosen not to look beyond that. Who can say what this shifty world will look like in six months anyway?

Education is a substantial, but by no means the only obstacle in our untethered teenage household. The interests are often conflicting and they seem to change color every week. If one is adoring the idea of living in the US, the other is sure to feel despondent for leaving behind her friends and beloved school. The worst is, I understand her qualms all too well. Before, at least she had some kind of picture of what she was leaving them for, now she doesn’t even have that anymore. As soon as my visa comes into sight, the America-loving daughter suddenly gets cold feet as well. “What if it’s not what I hoped it would be?” she asks me in an unsteady voice. You and I, we might have been two captains on a ship, which is not always considered an ideal situation. Now, I’m on my own, navigating tricky and changeable waters. I wouldn’t mind having to bicker with you over the right course to take.

There’s no one to take over the rudder anymore. Not here in Ibiza, not back in Holland and not when we will finally touch down on Californian soil. Sure, family or friends can step in for an evening or a day, perhaps even a weekend, to keep our girls company and make sure they go to school and get fed. But taking over, assuming the full responsibility for their lives, is now my task, and mine alone. The only one who could assist me in that was you. All decisions are exclusively mine, and so are the teenage anger and angst. When the hormones raging in Leone’s body make her want to shout or sneer at someone, I am her sole target. Well, and, to a certain extent, her sister. But I am the only one she can rebel against, ignore or recoil from when I try to touch her.

Sometimes I feel like a boxing ball, and I want to scream with exasperation. I do. At times I just want to run away. Flee the responsibility that I was so hesitant to accept in the first place. But way more often I feel like a failure. I should be imperturbed and patient, our girl needs a steady adult in this turbulent time of her life. Instead, I get angry when she stares at her phone for hours on end and let her snide remarks get to me. A single parent is not something I ever expected or wished to be. In my adolescence this scenario literally featured in my worst nightmares. I guess I am getting hard lessons in responsibility, among other things.  A few days ago, I came across an article that compared the stage of puberty to a time of release for the parents, to be accompanied by a feeling that’s very similar to lovesickness or grief. So it seems my mourning process is not quite over yet; I’ve lost you, and now I’m losing my children as well.

You left me at the onset of their teenage years, a stormy era. Ironically, you also left me at a time where we could see more freedom dawning on the horizon, and more time to spend on and with each other, thanks to the increasing independence of our babies. This is a time when the claims of parenthood start to relax when it comes to the direct, everyday care. At the same time, so much is happening, it dizzies me and sometimes I feel I can’t keep up with our rapidly evolving daughters. With you by my side, we would’ve lagged behind together, laughed about their adoration for Marvel characters and their conviction of knowing everything, and this particularly farewell would have not been so damn lonely.

Reconstructing my life would undoubtedly have been easier without children. But despite all the struggles, the complications that come with emigrating, moving, trying to accomplish any big change with schoolchildren in my wake, I am devastatingly grateful for my companions. Our daughters are wild, autonomous and multifaceted. I am blinded by their brilliance. At times they enrage and exhaust me, but much more often than that, they lift me up, inspire and teach me.

Wise beyond their years, they know and see me better than anyone else. More and more they appear next to me at the helm, and I realize I am not alone. We are three.

A week ago, returning from another run to the warehouse where I’ve stored most of our life, I was in the car listening to ABBA. An important soundtrack of my childhood and a recurring presence during our skiing trips, a melancholy impulse made me play the Swedish band’s music. Although you grew to like the unproblematic and sometimes-cheesy songs, you weren’t always crazy about our nth rendition of Waterloo or Voulez-vous with the cd playing in the background. Stuck behind the wheel, once in a while you suggested a change of music. Sometimes we agreed to it, but not often enough for your taste. Where I can listen to a favorite song over and over again, you disliked repetition, but the steady accompaniment of the 70’s band to our route to the French Alpes made the music acquire the happy association of those winter holidays. Now, of course, the songs have picked-up another hue: the pain of the loss of those travels.

Certain ABBA songs were more popular than others (or simply included in the Gold collection cd we always turned to) and therefore more familiar, but my Spotify account threw a lesser known (though not unknown) tune my way, called: Slipping Through my Fingers. It’s a song about a mother seeing her daughter off to school, plagued by a sadness at letting her child go, not just to school, but in a broader sense, simply because she’s growing up. Having children of my own and very sensitive to music and its lyrics, I had understood the feeling well. This, however, was the first time I heard the song since you died. It didn’t fail to touch me vehemently, but the clarity of the emotion was gone. Why was I crying? I knew it wasn’t just the letting go of our daughters anymore. Was it the recurring realization you will never see them grow up? Yes. The past year-and-a-half they have developed and changed so much, you’d hardly recognize them. Were my tears fueled by the notion I can no longer be the mother I used to be without you there to share the load, and therefore more often lose the precious time that Agnetha sings of? Absolutely. Was it because I can never again share with you this melancholy feeling of seeing our children outgrow their parents? Hell yeah. 

I have been doing alright, but the last few weeks my strength is crumbling. This might be the very first time I’m getting a taste of what depression is like. It’s not really surprising, for several stressors are uniting and serenading me their high notes. In less than a week, my kids and I will be homeless. I am cleaning out our special house, without knowing where we will go next. Our plan, to go to my former hometown, Los Angeles, has been thwarted by COVID19 – related complications. And although the prospect of moving to the US is quite daunting, it’s an exciting one as well. So what to do when the children no longer have a school to attend to in the Netherlands, but can’t go to their prospective school in Los Angeles either? Stuck in a schoolless vacuum, they see their friends picking up books and preparing for a new educational year, and look to me to find a solution. To create some security, show them what’s next. I’m failing at it and it feels like I m gambling with their future.

Relinquishing the house is fraught with emotions in too many hues. On the logistical side, it’s large and accommodates more stuff than I was aware we possessed. Intending to get rid of as much as possible, I have been going through it for months now, and the flow of paperwork, books, trinkets and clothes just doesn’t seem to end or even abate. I never realized you held onto mementoes as much as you did, until I dove into the contents of our cabinets and discovered a treasure of souvenirs from your youth and our life. When I came across a few diaries from the time you were about thirteen and freshly in high school, it was the first time I discovered you were inclined to journaling in your teen years. From a more tender age, a poetry book resurfaced. On the first pages of it you introduced yourself to the people who contributed their rhymes to your little keepsake notebook. The innocent children’s poem begins with the line “This book is mine, for as long as I’ll live”.

Since I inherited all your possessions, I guess it’s now mine, to hold onto for your children. It’s one of the most precious discoveries I made during my odyssey, but there were many more like it. Not only cabinets and closets held surprises, our computer did as well. Letters you wrote to me and I to you are the obvious instigators of emotional writhing, and yet I feel the simple notes synchronizing our daily schedules or grocery shopping are more insidious, because the agony they cause is unexpected, giving me a brief taste of how our life together used to be. One of those was particularly nasty. It was a brief email message dealing with the question whether you should get life insurance. I believe we had an argument the night before; the cynical tone was not like you, unless you were feeling hurt. You’ll never know how excruciatingly hard this joke, that was never meant to be funny in the first place, now hit me. This is the way you introduced this email: “Let’s discuss my death.”

From another angle, our moving out of Overbeek (the name of our monumental house) is also a goodbye to my family history, the main reason I wanted to live there. It wasn’t just the house I was born into, it has always been a symbol to me and my entire extended family. The families of both of my parents had lived here. At the same time. Overbeek was built in 1840 and holds the oldest elevator in the Netherlands. One of our wedding gifts was a drawing by my parents of this house, demonstrating its significance and a prophecy of what lay in our future. On our wedding-day, however, we could not possibly imagine we’d ever live there, much less, that you’d die there.

It’s a magnificent yet quirky mansion with a breathtaking woodsy garden. It’s also the place where my grandfather died suddenly and unexpectedly, his youngest son, my father, only thirteen years old. Sixty years later exactly the same happened to you, and your children. The similarities are nothing short of eerie. How well did I come to understand my grandmother’s plight.

As children, my cousin and I had made a pact to buy Overbeek back one day. We did. Now the time has come to finish this chapter of my, our, family history.

Wood ash weighs next to nothing. Cleaning out a fireplace after the timber has been consumed entirely requires some effort to not let the feathery dust disperse itself throughout the rest of the room. So when the crematorium handed me the heavy urn holding your remains, I thought the material the container was made of accounted for most of its weight. The smooth surface of the object hinted at bakelite or maybe even black marble.

But human ashes are not like wood ash. I did not realize your incinerated body was responsible for the heftiness of the object I had to haul through customs and to Ibiza until our small party was at Winti to return it to the sea you loved so. As all of us scooped handfuls of you from the urn, its weight gradually diminished until it became clear the container was nothing more than a simple plastic jar. Its weight, you, had left it.

In undecided times that complicate international travel, some of your closest friends came through and, on the day you were once born, said a final goodbye to you. The sea was still and receptive, accepting you as a natural part of it, the sky an unbroken blue, the way you preferred it. With the coarse sand that had been you stuck under my nails, one of your recurring jokes came to me: on holidays, when the sun was dominantly present in a sapphire sky, you’d find the tiniest cloud and playfully say: “oh no, it’s overcast!”

Although we all knew the contents of that vessel weren’t you, not anymore, it did feel as if we were setting you free, maybe even more so, ourselves. For me at least, this was closure. Not from you, never from you. You will always be part of me. But returning you to the earth, the sea, was like a permission to continue life without you. To let go of mourning as the main purpose of my daily existence. To know that you’re resting among the rocks of the Balearic Sea makes me feel desperate and joyful at the same time. The furious pain this notion, meaning that you’re no longer a human being, no longer a body, no longer the love I can touch, causes can still strike like lightning and tear me apart in a similar way.

This is a time of countless farewells. Like a dog, I am shedding. Getting rid of superfluous possessions. As our daughters and I are looking to an uncertain and entirely new future, I hold our past in my hands, and every picture, every letter and email from you, passes through my body and mind. Our past is no longer ours, it’s mine now. My responsibility. The process feels like a purging, though that sounds too harsh.

The mushroom table we once bought for Robin had been moulding, useless and unseen, on the terrace for a while. But toppling it into the container at the landfill shut another door to the time we were trying to be the best parents for our two toddlers. We were so ridiculously devoted. I still feel the devotion, but now, I’m scrambling to suffice.  

In tiny steps I’m forced to contemplate every part of our life together. The steps need to be small, because at every single one I break, and I can’t continue until I put myself back together again. Every time, I change a little. Does it make me stronger? I really don’t know.

Some of the items I’m casting off are too significant to be a small step, like our Toyota Highlander. Not because of its size, but of what happened inside it, the places it took us. It was an extravagant present from one of our closest friends, and, at the time being the only SUV with a hybrid technology, he had it shipped to us from the United States. That its transatlantic transport probably negated all environmental benefits the hybrid motor offered, was a realization we had no idea what to do with, so we stored it. Well, we did our best. We certainly didn’t do everything right, but we did try to make a difference.

Our second child was on the way and we wanted more travel space. I detested SUVs, but again, it was the only larger hybrid car available at the time. And for its space and dependability, I grew to love it dearly. So now, with a heavy heart, I rummaged through all its nooks and crannies to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind before handing it over to its fortunate new owner. Some of the objects I found had been lying hidden for years in one of the many compartments, like the tiny pink notebook with the portrait of a horse on its cover in which Robin’s simple sentences reveal what a seven-year-old considers relevant travel annotations. “We are in the car for a long time and I don’t like it” and “On the beach, the wind was so fierce, we could hardly walk! It was so much fun!” At the back of the only partially used notebook, in more mature writing, is another note. It says: “I’m dying inside, while outside, I’m staying strong”. I don’t know if it’s a quote of a song or something I need to be concerned about.

Your sunglasses, still perched in their overhead holder, remind me of your sun-sensitive eyes. You’d almost never go out without them. “If I do”, you’d say, “the sun will be sure to come out.”

I try not to get too attached to objects, and my current process is an excellent exercise. But the Highlander was so much more than that, and when I relinquished the kind monster in the parking lot of the car dealer, I left behind a large part of our past.

The laptop I use now, was once yours. The picture functioning as its wallpaper was made by you. It shows our beautiful dog Scout, and, in the background, our house. Of the three entities implied by or figuring in this photograph, we already lost two. Soon, when I have completed my release and the house will be empty at last, the third will stop being a part of our daily life and find a spot on the extensive shelves of our past.

Our future, a question mark.

On the 31^st of December 2020, a year had gone by since you passed away. It was undeniably a milestone, exacerbated by the date: the year’s end had been yours as well. So, on this day, we had lived through, experienced, every single day a year holds without you. Learned to accept and understand your absence an infinitesimal bit better. Dates are nothing but names and numbers placed arbitrarily by us humans on the circadian rhythms the universe created millions of years ago, but we have imbued them with such significance that, in most of us, dates can evoke strong emotions. And so it was for everyone who loves you.

The days leading up to the 31^st of December brought with them very vivid memories of those, your, last days exactly one year ago, how we spent them, with or without you. Our final moments with you are branded into our minds, collectively yet individually, because that ultimate moment was a different one for each and everyone of us. Christmas Eve would turn out to be the last time your parents saw their son, Boxing day, the last time you got to enjoy my mother’s famous traditional Christmas dish: braised saddle of hare. Your sister, awaiting you in the mountains to join her for a few days on the slopes, never got to welcome you there. Instead, she had to drive back twelve hours to cremate you.

Robin’s final moment with you was when she said goodnight to you as I took her to her room. Normally, you would’ve always gone up to give her a bedtime kiss, but you weren’t feeling that well, and were in bed yourself. Her sleep ritual has always been very important to her, so when she realized, right after you died, she didn’t kiss you goodnight that fateful evening, it was like a dagger piercing her heart, and, perhaps even more, mine. A notion like this is enough to destroy a person, but we should take comfort in knowing you were always generous with your kisses and cuddles and showered both our girls with a plethora of signs of affection. And I do, I really do, but this humongous detail can still evoke such a storm of pain.

The last moment I saw you alive was when you left our bed to accompany little Leo, in one of your many selfless acts, to ensure my good night’s rest. Leone had been worried the whole evening (did she intuit your death? It would not surprise me) and wanted to sleep with one of us. Your selfless nature made you get up and join her to sleep in the guestroom.

This made Leone the last person to see you alive. She told me you left her that morning of the 31^st. An early riser, you retreated to her bedroom to read. I wish you would have come to me, to our bedroom, where I was still sleeping, entirely unaware of what lay ahead. But you didn’t want to wake me, even though I know there was nothing you wanted more than to snuggle up to me, and so your final, altruistic, act made you pass your last living moments alone.

The events of the 29^th and 30^th  of December 2019 revisited me vividly, moments that had revealed both your grandness of spirit and your unwellness. Remarkably, those final days were packed with special moments: your compassion for an angry waitress, our beautiful family walk on the beach where you told our kids about some of your adolescent mischief, the visit to the cardiologist who did not see the urgency of your situation. It was a bright and crisp winter day and in the waiting room the low rays of the setting sun embraced us, as we mused about all the places we could go to, to visit or live. We talked about our future, full of soft-glowing adventures, when neither of us realized our future together was heaving its last breath.

In the evening, the four of us played a board game, but I could see the raucousness of the children was a bit too much for you. You were not well, and before you went to bed early, you took your very first, and last, dose of antiplatelets.

Questions and doubts, though not as strident as before, still plague me: perhaps the cardiologist failed, or maybe there was no way he could have have seen it, perhaps he shouldn’t have given you the blood thinners. Why did I, who is always cautious when it comes to pharmaceuticals, let you take antiplatelets while neither the ECG nor your blood pressure called for it? What if those were what killed you? No one knows, and I doubt we’ll ever find out. But it doesn’t matter anymore; no explanation, if it ever comes, will bring you back.   

Your family, the children and I had decided to spend the holidays on Ibiza, in an effort to make them a little lighter, to let the island’s healing energy carry and guide us. As Holland had installed another lockdown, we benefited from Ibiza’s improved COVID-19 situation and were able to find some welcome distraction in the shape of eating out, or simply enjoying a coffee on a sunny terrace, something we hadn’t been able to do since October.

As the new year drew closer, all of us grew increasingly introspective. A full moon let us live through our painful love for you and lit up that dark night preceding the anniversary of your death. We embarked on a guided walk in the northernmost part of the island. Looking out over the Balearic sea and the rugged cliffs, the sky a magnificent purple stage for this Cold Moon, our thoughts rested upon you and the aching cleft in our hearts.

We were fortunate to enjoy our dinner at a truly Ibicencan restaurant, and the pure campo-food was lovely, but our tears made an almost constant film over our eyes. Somehow it seems that the more wonderful the experience, the more stinging the pain of your absence. At dessert, I broke down in a way that doesn’t happen to me very often. Not in public. Most of my tears are controllable, but these weren’t. Salting my brownie and vanilla icecream and dotting the white linen tablecloth, they demanded to be seen, no matter how hard I tried to continue to talk and smile and eat.

I never say, “it is unfair”, because I don’t have a right to say that. Yes, losing you is the worst thing that ever happened to me and it shattered me like a glass figurine. But many are so much less fortunate. Losing you feels like losing everything, and yet, I still have so much, so many loving people around me, our incredible children.

The day of your passing, the 31^st, we set out early in the morning to walk to Punta Galera, the mysterious rock formation that offers eternal views of the sea. It’s quite a tricky walk before you reach the immense slates of rock where, during summer time, people go to sunbathe, in the nude or not. It’s an awe-inspiring place, a piece of art, with nature and erosion as its twin sculptors.

We reached the rock that we used to jump off before snorkling in the clear waters surrounding it. Reminiscing, I saw you in happier times, already in the water, egging on whichever one of the kids was losing her daring, coaxing and encouraging them until they finally followed suit. Even I was one of your unwilling subjects, once.

All of us, your parents, your sister and brother-in-law, your nieces, our daughters and me, existed in a mournful solemnity, each of us with their own memories of you, looking out over the sea and down from the rock face to find you.

The rock formation was deserted, except for Alex, the resident of the cave that can be found about six feet up in the rockface. You saw him, the last time we were there as a family, when he made pancakes for the children. I had talked to him several times and he recognizes me.

This cave has been inhabited for a long time. It reminds me of a night we were here on one of our pre-children, carefree holiday nights. Together with Ruben, one of our best friends, we got it into our heads to drink a beer on the rock terraces. In the middle of a moonless night, we climbed down, armed with a flashlight to illuminate our way. As soon as we didn’t need it anymore to reveal the tricky pathway, Ruben let it glide over the rugged rockface. Suddenly, a deep voice broke the dark stillness, wishing us “buenas noches”. We almost fainted. It was Alex’s predecessor, a yogi who lived inside that cave for I don’t know how many years. This man lived soberly, and all his possessions were inside the cave.

That’s not Alex’s way. Our cycloptic friend has made the surroundings of the cave his kitchen, lounge and living room. The place is decorated with pictures, cats and mantras, and he interrupted our commemorative silence by inviting us for some ginger tea. We accepted with grateful surprise and sat down on the cushions he had placed for us on the rocks. He set out to make tea for us, no small feat, since he first needed to make a fire before getting the water to boil. And that’s very unlike flipping the switch on a water cooker.

As we sat, he grated the ginger and sliced the lemon. With amazement we beheld his well-equipped al fresco kitchen and the long time it took him to prepare the tea taught us a bit about patience. Alex’s hospitality was a beautiful surprise, lending an extra shade to our serene sadness. It was fitting for a day that was so filled with you; you used to relish this kind of encounters.

Some days into the new year, I went running and decided to pass by Alex, to see if he needed anything. As we were talking, nature, or you, perhaps that’s the same now, created a miracle for the two of us. A complete rainbow appeared (again, a rainbow without rain) right in front of us. It rose up out of the cold seawater, a spectacle of which we could see both the beginning and the end, simultaneously. Alex, who has lived with nature as his constant backdrop for seven years, told me he had only ever seen a rainbow like this three or four times. We were dumbstruck and it felt like a benediction. A benediction from you.

Our Newyears Eve was demure, but we did our best. We had oysters and oliebollen (a Dutch pastry, not unlike a doughnut without a hole) but no champagne. I couldn’t help but revisit the way we spent the last day of the year in the past. We would wake up excitedly, in anticipation of the newyears festivities, picking out our craziest clothes. What a different life. What a morphed world, this 2020 world. A year without parties, a year without visits from friends, a year without school camps, but most of all, a year without you.

Time indeed polishes the pain. Like the sea smoothing the rocks it gets rid of the sharp edges. But each passed day, every bygone year, time also takes you further away from me. If one could translate time into distance, which is done in astronomy, after one year, you’re already a light year (the distance light travels in a year, almost ten trillion kilometres) away from me. And every single day adds to that distance.

This last November we would have celebrated the eighteenth anniversary of our marriage, but it was aborted just before reaching adulthood. ‘Till death do us part’ arrived too soon for our wedlock to come of age. I was convinced it would attain a very respectable seniority, we would make it that far, but I never realized how wrong I was. You dying before the era in which retrospection would be our dominating activity, was an entirely unfathomable scenario to me. It often still is.

Monday November 23^rd of the cursed year of 2020, the weather was just as beautifully crisp as it had been on our wedding day, and the cloud-speckled blue skies kept luring me back to it. The day I wanted to tell and show the world how much I love you. I don’t think I have ever relived our wedding as vividly as on the first anniversary I had to endure as a widow. That day was an open wound. It sounds bad, but the days that are like pus-filled boils are so much worse. An open wound hurts more, but it is pure and honest, it sparkles. You can behold the pain. The boils, on the other hand, are depressing, covert and stinking and secretive. You don’t acknowledge them until they start throbbing with dull persistence. They are the uneventful, futureless days that hide the pain that is always there.

Our wedding was extravagant, an event. The nuptials and the festivities surrounding them were nothing short of spectacular, and a lot of work went into organizing it. We argued more than we had ever done before. No one told us that getting married was this nerve-wracking, and too late we saw the value of a wedding planner.

Our, or rather, my ambition, was an important cause for the intensity of the preparations. My perfectionist nature (not something to be particularly proud of by the way, it’s a pest and an obstacle more often than not) lay at the root of the desire to make our matrimonial day just as extraordinary as the way I proposed to you.

Yes, I proposed to you, and the way I did it almost scared you off enough never to want to have anything to do with me for the rest of your life. Slightly exaggerated, perhaps, but you did for a moment doubt my sanity. And who’d blame you if they knew my plan was to stalk you?

So how did I go about this? Well, I collected several odd postcards, many that for a while were freely available in restaurants and bars and doubled as ads, depicting things that could be said to have a connection to you or us. One of them was a picture of Bob Marley, a musician whose music you loved. Another showed a cartoon of a man and a woman talking about marriage and yet another displayed the picture of a ‘lying pill’, referring, of course, to my little smoke and mirrors game. On the back, I wrote a single cryptic line that alluded either to the picture, or to you or us. Altering my handwriting was easy, since it is wild and illegible, so all I had to do was adopt a tiny and neat script for the texts on the cards.

Every day I mailed you one of those postcards, so you received one daily, except on Sundays. This went on for a while, and you grew increasingly worried. You discussed it with friends, who hadn’t a clue. My only accomplice was my mother, who mailed a card for me once, when I was unable to do it myself.

All the while, I managed to keep a straight face, even though sometimes I had to pivot away to hide my satisfied grin or swiftly duck into the bathroom to release some silent giggles. You never suspected anything.

Until one day I got sloppy. This had been going on for a few weeks already, and I was almost ready to pop the question, just one or two more cards while I was waiting for the engagement ring to be finished. For a few imprudent minutes, I left the designated card on the console table next to the door, quickly bounding up the stairs to get my wallet.

You were on the second floor, so I figured it was safe to do so. But unexpectedly and suddenly, you went downstairs and got to the card before I did. The look on your face was one of utter confoundment and concern. It took quite some effort to convince you it was okay, and that no, your girlfriend wasn’t a psychopath. I asked you to have a little more patience and rushed to the goldsmith in the hope of finding the ring finished. Fortunately, I did, and when I returned, I asked you to marry me. And with a lingering hint of confusion hovering over your euphoria, you said yes.

Upon learning that the secret stalker was I, your mother questioned the sagacity of marrying someone who is such a proficient liar. She came around eventually and I even think she likes me.

In the far south of the Netherlands, we had our own little tour of castles. The ceremony took place in Kasteel Oost, dinner was served in the limestone caves of Chateau Neercanne, where in 1991, during the Eurotop, European leaders were treated to a banquet with Beatrix, our queen at the time, and we spent our wedding night in Chateau St. Gerlach. Family and friends did too, and afterwards we learned that our mischievous friends snuck into the hotel spa in the middle of the night, armed with an array of alcoholic beverages.

You were nervous, but so was I. I had my period way too early and lost an unplanned amount of weight. Waiting for me to arrive with my father, you were a bit ill at ease, and so guilelessly handsome. The video that holds images of our vows shows the tension in both our jaws as family members wept with affection, and my, “yes, with all my heart!” instead of a simple “yes, I do”, felt a little forced. But that hint of corniness should not eclipse its truth. The awkwardness I felt had to do with breaking through Dutch’s limited capacity for drama. Marriage was never part of my plan, until you made me want it wholeheartedly, if only to tell the world (and even more: you) how special you were, are and forever will be.

Our family and friends showered us with an overwhelming amount of love in the shape of a hilarious power point presentation of our development from baby to adult, a video in which all our friends wished us well in their own unique ways, a beautifully engraved mirror, and an amazing work of art, created with artifacts from our childhood. We received deep poetry from people we would never have expected it.

My father gave me the gift of accompanying me on his saxophone while I sang to you Bette Midler’s The Rose. I cherish our practice sessions in obscure little studios during the weeks leading up to our wedding day.

At the end of this day, we retreated to our beautiful room, exhausted with gratitude and incredulity at all the effort everyone had put into their gifts. Not only did the two of us exchange hearts, we received a truckload of love from our friends and family as well, and we felt like the luckiest people in the world.

Our out of the way location meant the wedding party was quite small, which was a source of stress, since it meant making a difficult selection and excluding friends and family members. The wealth of having many friends and a large family here became a bit of a burden. However, we didn’t see the need of limiting our legal union to only one day of celebration, so a week later, to make it up to all our other friends, we also threw a big party in Amsterdam.

We truly went all out with this wedding of ours, and there were times afterwards I remember feeling somewhat conscience-stricken at its lavishness. But never will I feel that way again. Now that you’re no longer with me, I am so grateful for the opportunity of having had this extraverted, gorgeous and generous wedding. It exemplifies our life together and your passing taught me there is no use in holding back.

Always drenched in love, the time we were given was full and rich, and there isn’t much we failed to do. We traveled to exotic places, experienced freedom and ecstasy and wonder and illness and sorrow. You and I, we took risks and explored different paths that were sometimes challenging. But no matter what, we remained each other’s confidants and support through all of it. Together we tackled parenthood, which was not always easy, but a great source of joy and learning. We created two incredible girls and even though we ourselves felt like we were still kids when we were gifted them, we must have done something right. They are turning into beautiful, good people with big hearts.

You should have been with me still; our grandiose, wild plans were nowhere near exhausted. We talked about them the day before you died. But although my gratitude wears a sturdy veneer of agony, I’m endlessly grateful for all we were fortunate to have. More than anything else, your passing taught me there is no use in holding back. Life and love should be done fully, with wild abandon, like there’s is no tomorrow. Because sometimes, there really isn’t.

The 23rd of November 2002 was our day. And so was every day after that.

The sky is persuasive today. It doesn’t leave any space for doubt and, without mercy, has pressured away all moisture in it. Summer’s heat visualized, a blue dome hovering motionlessly over the pine trees of Ibiza, accompanied by the droning composition of crickets. Those hardy pines, that have braved storms and heat and drought and floods and construction workers and spoiled, rich tourists. Many people dislike them for exactly that, their stubbornness. Their persistence. I love them, but I love all trees. A tree cut down is murder, at best euthanasia; it hurts me physically. To me, the smell of sawdust is like the scent of blood, timberland a vast slaughterhouse.

Sitting on the terrace of our house, thriving Ibiza trees surround and comfort me, though some of them are broken: damaged by the storm that raged while you were here. It wasn’t the one that stole you from me; that was a very different storm. A silent one, wreaking irreparable havoc inside your heart and lungs. Why, oh why did I fail to notice it?

One of those trees hangs crooked, like a broken flower. It is me. You saw this happen, your mortal eyes witnessed the snapping of the trees, you sensed the storm’s brutal force. Last autumn, you filmed it and sent it to me, to show me how extraordinarily severe it was. You shared everything with me. I now regret my decision not to join you and the kids on this holiday, for what none of us knew (or did you?) was your final earthly sojourn in Ibiza. The scarred trees remind me of what I missed then and what I’m missing now. But they are just the hints of the time I wasn’t here with you, greatly outnumbered by intimations of the time we spent here together. The island can’t stop telling me about it.

You are everywhere. Casa Dieter, the house you decorated so lovingly, the sunsets you could never get enough of, the Mercat de Forada, where you used to buy stuff you’d never use, just to support the people who made them. Where we would while away Saturday afternoons, drinking cortados and not doing anything really, something neither of us were very good at, except at this tiny market in the campo on a crossroads you thought could be a backdrop in any Twin Peaks episode. A market where people sell the produce they harvest from their own garden and make unpretentious music. There we got to drink the ultimate and true Ibiza essence, the way it is supposed to be. Simple and pure happiness.

The clubs are closed because of COVID-19, which is just as well. Plenty of memories there too, darker ones, because tainted by the remote possibility of nights spent there, unslept nights, having contributed to your heart failure. Driving past a shut down Pacha I notice the memories of our thrilling parties, once our most carefree moments, are more convoluted than others.

In the garage of our house I discover a duffel bag with objects you carefully stored last October: shaving cream, a bag of ground coffee and a wooden beach-bat set that was a gift from your parents. To realize you put these away, envisioning a future opportunity to get them out for some sporty fun with our kids and your nieces, reveals yet another, brand-new level of agony. It also makes you materialize more, and I catch myself a few times, lost in a world where you still are. Expecting to see you diving into the water. On the brink of calling you, to tell you Robin walked to the beach by herself for the very first time.

To me, you might be here more than anywhere else. Nowhere were we more together than on this island. We vacationed and lived here. Countless memories adorn this Balearic island, most of them very happy, some devastating, like the dark day, a mere two weeks into our adventure-year here, when I got the call from my sister to send word my father died. Out of the blue, like a flash of lightning. Like you. That time, you were next to me, to support me in my panic-stricken grief. Now, it is you who are gone, and there is no one. In my entire life I have not felt this lonely, not even when I really was alone, just having moved to Los Angeles, away from all I knew. Is it better not to have known such intimate togetherness? It certainly makes for a more profound loneliness, I think.

What hidden meaning or lesson should I look for in the reality that the two men who meant most to me (three really, including my uncle, who perished many years ago, but also way too young and unexpectedly) left so sudden, leaving me without an opportunity for saying goodbye, for letting them know how much they mean to me? Is there a meaning, or is it merely? Just because. I prefer a meaning, but I haven’t found it yet, and fear I never will.

I knew that returning to our island would be confronting. But the devastation I feel, especially the first days here, I did not expect. My heart simply won’t stop breaking. There is no pause in the grief, no breather, something I have been able to count on the past months in Holland, where a reminder will set off the pain, but after some time it always subsides. This first week on Ibiza, the pain simply will not go away.

When the flood of memories abates a bit, another aspect of your absence reveals itself: I am now the only one to make the holiday. The chores you and I used to share, like grocery shopping, are now mine. How we relished doing this together, especially the first groceries of the holiday. This time I am dragging my feet in indecision, completely befuddled as to what I need to buy. I’m choking, and it’s not just because of the obligatory face mask. I, an unlikely mother, am now the only one left to entertain and guide the children. Every decision, right or wrong, is mine, and mine alone. I had no idea how exhausting that can be. The day my birthday comes along, I realize it has to be celebrated and I find myself contorted in an anxious determination to make sure we have fun.

So, I plan a trip to Formentera and book a hotel. When we arrive, looking for a quick and simple bite on the beach, we instead end up at a seriously overprized beach café. I rent bikes, but the distances are too long for them to be useful. The hotel is impersonal and not very nice. The food is hardly edible, and because of that MF-virus we can’t even get the overcooked and unrecognizable fare ourselves. We peer at it through plastic screens to see if we want it. Most of it we don’t, but we eat it anyway. The face masks are suffocating in more than one way, but fortunately Robin puts her comic talents to good use and, when we are at our table, places the mask over her eyes in mock despair. She makes us laugh, thank god. The next day we are served an equally inedible breakfast and it rains. The trip feels like, and probably is, a spastic flight in order not to face the bleak reality of having to celebrate my birthday without you.

Our trip is salvaged by our visit to the tiny beach shack where we had been before, with you, though it comes with the painful reminiscence I’m getting used to. The visits to those familiar places. I guess I’m still searching for you, assuring myself you aren’t there somewhere, hiding, waiting for me to find you.

The best part about my birthday are Robin and Leone, who do such an amazing job making me feel special and grateful, and the gifts family and friends gave to me to take to Ibiza. The most precious and heartrending one is a posthumous gift from you, which you give to me by way of your amazing mother. Before you died, you had been collecting pictures of me, to make into a book, once again illustrating your loving dedication. Your mother found them and decided to finish the job for you, this way conjuring up your final gift to me.

Ten days later it is our daughter’s turn. This time, more than ever before, I need to get everything right. The cake, for which I have to get a new oven because the one you and I bought together last year is broken, with Robin’s help comes out really well and the cake-and-presents ritual is wonderful. But as the day progresses the happiness collapses, not only for me, but for the birthday girl as well, culminating in her telling me in a tearful voice she doesn’t feel festive at all. Bewildered by my inability to make our broken union feel whole again, like Sisyphus I push and toil to get the feeling to a higher plane, while sensing the rock of your absence hanging off my neck.

We manage to end the day joyfully, with a moonlit dinner in the romantic garden of a restaurant in the North of the island. It’s little Leo’s warped birthday, but at least part of it feels like one. When I hit my bed, I’m exhausted and secretly glad the birthdays are over.

It’s hard work, being happy without you.