Dear Aart Staartjes

“Mr. Aart is on TV.” My autistic girl sees you every day on TV, because seriously addicted to Sesame Street, but now that you appeared in the news, she understood that it was different. While I try to brush her hair, I say that it is true that Mr. Aart is on TV, that she saw that very well and I just leave it at that. Why you were on TV, I keep to myself for now. She wouldn't understand. Not understand, not believe. Just like me actually, while I really do know it.

Today I am thinking a lot about Hanna. Your Hanna. Hanna Staartjes. Half of the Staartje that forms that beautifully weathered nameplate on your little house in Patmos with you. Staartjes. You saw the house and thought: we are crazy if we don't do this. And so it happened. Half of the year in Marken, the other half in Patmos. And occasionally you picked up a few days of Greek happiness there.

I think of Hanna. That nice, blonde woman about whom we know so little. How will Hanna open the door later, there in your Greek little house? Will she suddenly have to cry very hard when she sees your row of All Stars next to your clogs? Does her heart shrink when she sits on the red couch in the evening and now only puts her feet on the painted wooden stool, instead of both of yours? Does she stroke the stones you found on the other side of the island, from the part that is only accessible by ship?

“What lucky birds we are,” you once said when you showed us your house at Dream House Wanted. You were too. And we were lucky birds. Because we got to enjoy so many years, so many mornings between breakfast and brushing teeth with you.

The missing has already begun.