If he is no longer there

I wake up and feel ignorant. But then the truth rushes back in. An overwhelming ‘oh yes, that was there’ wraps around me.

The card is on the tray on the table. Between the candles. Essentially a list of names, dates, and places, but I drown in the stories behind the words. April 24, 1943. War child. Fled with your mother, from the battered Rotterdam to the Gooi. We receive a letter from a woman who tells us that you were born in her house. We didn't know that. You were not the kind of man who lived in the past. You preferred to listen. You enjoyed a child hanging on your reading glasses or that glass that was refilled. Not too much, but often, that was allowed.

I see the name of your first wife and immediately I see the photo that we also received during these days. You two together on the ground, your arm around the woman who was and remained your great love, I imagine that you just whispered to her to spread it together. To that bench outside, somewhere alone. The woman who would give you children. I also see two years behind her name. She is no more. The great sorrow of your life.

Then I see the names of your children. I think of the adventures that have been told to me. Driving wildly and letting the children decide where you would go right or left. The destination didn't matter, you were together. Summers in France, peace and warmth.

I see the names of your grandchildren. The sum of your love that must have started somewhere on that dance floor in Amsterdam.

Dear Wim, I would have preferred to see that card on that tray a few years later. But I am proud and grateful that my name has also become a link in your life.