If you’d come back from the dead today, you’d find such a different world than the one you unexpectedly said goodbye to on the 31^st of December 2019. Yes, this goes for many deceased, but it’s not even three months since you died. Very soon after you left us, the world ground to a halt. This first reality shift, you dying upon us, hit us and our many amazing friends like a 9.0 earthquake, already significantly altering the way we regard life, when all of a sudden the entire world stopped turning. No wonder. It is of a symbolic correctness: the one who took care of everyone is gone, the one who made sure everything ran smoothly is no longer here to fix it all.

The rise of the corona virus happened so soon after you died, people wondered whether that might have been what killed you. And the thought isn’t that outrageous. Your lungs were affected, red and heavier than normal. You had been short of breath during physical exertion, even when trying to bike up a small hill. Your lungs had trouble getting enough oxygen, but the question is: why, what was the cause? The pathologists concluded that a heart condition (possibly genetic) was the culprit. As far as I know, you never had a fever, and they didn’t find evidence for an infection, neither in your blood nor your heart and lungs. Still, it is eerie how similar your symptoms were to those of people who have contracted corona. And if you’d come to the GP now, a few months later, perhaps she’d have diagnosed you differently, and you might have been admitted to the hospital to get oxygen. And you might have lived. Time’s nasty ironic games.

But I’ve learned to quickly dismiss all what-ifs. I don’t avoid thinking them, but I get rid of them right after they pop into my head.

Oh, how I’d love to tell you all that happened since you died. I imagine you walking in the door (something that still comes very easily to me) and after hugging, kissing and touching you like never before, I’d tell you every little detail of the last couple of months. Not just your beautiful and heartrending service, which was attended by close to a thousand people, but also how we’re coping without you, how your brave daughters are weathering this storm, learning to live without a father they can cuddle and learn from.

And then I’d tell about how something happened that you never ended up experiencing in your lifetime. Humanity in its entirety forced on its knees by a virus, nature telling us we should change our ways. Now. And somehow, things that normally take so much time to alter, are established within weeks, days even. Air travel has been cut down to about ten percent of what it used to be, and people who can work at home, do. And guess what? Air quality has increased significantly. Ain’t that a surprise.

Our country, The Netherlands, is one of the milder ones in its measures. This has generated some criticism, but it seems we are doing enough, even though we did have to get used to the idea of being curbed in our freedom. After all, we are a headstrong people.

So, like I said, Holland is not as strict as some countries, but still the measures taken are unheard of. Not a complete lockdown (a word that has a good chance of becoming word of the year 2020), rather, a lockdown light. In our lives, or perhaps in the entire history of human kind, we never experienced anything remotely like it, not when SARS was a threat or the Mexican flu (Swine Influenza) roamed the planet. All restaurants, bars, sports clubs and theaters have been closed. Children cannot go to school anymore, which seems to be the most draconic of measures and defining the severity of the situation. Our days are filled with (school)work, drawing and watching movies, all in the comfort, or restriction, of our own home. And it’s happening world wide.

Another piece of agonizing irony: the lockdown this virus has wrought brings with it a general decrease of stress and “to-do lists”, and an increase of family time. Time for playing games, reading and spending time in nature. We’ve been too busy (an ailment of not just us, but a large part of the Western world), and we knew it, but were unable to fix it ourselves.  If you’d still be here, we’d finally have the opportunity to watch movies and series together, for which we somehow never found the time. I’m not quite sure why anymore. What I do know is how you would have loved this.

Spring did arrive, as it always does, nature being oblivious to any of our plights, whether it is the loss of a husband and father or a lethal virus wreaking havoc among people. The weather is brilliant, like a cool diamond, and its hopeful promises reveal your absence with a vengeance.