Walking the empty streets of the usually crowded heart of Amsterdam allows me to revisit each moment I spent with you here, and retrace every single one of the many steps we took together in this city. Your city. I can find my way here blindly, which is a good thing, for my own life has turned into a foreign land that has me completely lost. Amsterdam’s corona-swept canals, where we used to live when life was reckless and never ending, whisper and echo your name. In the calm dark water I see your face, reflected from the memory of nocturnal boat rides with friends, lightly illegal and doused with the thrill of forbidden adventures. Especially now that everyone has vacated this world heritage site, I see you everywhere. The cobblestone streets ooze your essence and funnel it straight into my shattered heart.

The cliche, or cliched truth, goes that when you die, your entire life flashes before you. I’m discovering that something similar occurs when you lose the love you share your life with. All the memories we created together, and they are abundant, have replayed through my mind these past months, not in any chronological order. And this is not only true for existing memories; our future ones, in the shape of plans that will never materialize, also appeared before my mind’s eye.

More than once, I’ve wondered why we should bother making memories when they end up hurting so damn much. Every restaurant we had dinner at, every street we walked, every holiday we went on. I feel like I need to sand these places, to remove at least some of your veneer, before I will be able to enjoy them again. Your absence hurts, but, oddly enough, your presence hurts even more. So I deliberately go and revisit ‘our’ sites and experiences, although that, like everything else these corona-days, is severely curtailed.

My mind is primed to find any connection. It frantically searches for any route that leads to you. Almost every song seems to apply to us, to you, and every object or scene I see reminds me of you and the life we lived. The obvious, such as your clothes or your tennis racket, but also the not so obvious, such as the grass. There is no clear connection to grass, except that you will never lie in it again.

Balmy spring evenings, a delicious meal, deer in the garden. They still bring me joy, but right after a feeling of delight lands in me, a toxic sting penetrates it. The cherry blossom is blooming its heart out in a cloud of pinkish white, but you will never again be there to admire it with me. I really want to believe you’re still somewhere, somewhere near, proving me wrong. That you are and forever will be next to me, marveling at the world. But I find it so hard to do.

When I look into the future, there is no one to share the milestones our children will reach with. No one to say to, “remember, when they were little”. I know I will have a new life. But that particular future won’t ever be repaired, and it will remain utterly bleak. These realizations constitute the darkest, gloomiest reaches of my grief, and I don’t often go there. If I would, I don’t think I would make it out. It’s a black hole, of which I can only approach the event horizon to just carefully take a glimpse inside. And what I see there could end me.

Writing will be my salvation, as it has always been, but at least as much our incredible children. I know you gave them your highest and best, for they are pure and true and strong. Our big girl Robin (she will probably grow as tall as you were), said something the other day that blew me away. She had just gotten out of the shower, towel loosely wrapped around her and still dripping, when she suddenly looked at me in wonder and said: “You know, maybe you just die when your life is full. That it has nothing to do with disease or anything like that.”  What pure wisdom. When she was a baby, I wrote a poem about her. It was called “Le connu perdu”, because she often wore that profound look, as if she was watching us with ancient knowledge from some previous life. This insight must have sprung from that place.

The Kalverstraat, always too busy to visit, except perhaps early Monday mornings, now seems alien. As if a virus wiped out all of humanity. It reminds me of I am legend with Will Smith. Stores and restaurants, even McDonald’s and Burger King, closed. No people anywhere. In this alien world I discern poetic justice, in two ways. First of all: because you died the world stopped, and it’s only natural it should. Secondly, it reveals an overdue necessity to rethink our ways. Economy should not, cannot, be endlessly growing. In medicine, something that keeps on growing is called a tumor and will eventually destroy everything around it. This is exactly what our economy, our capitalist system, has become. To the planet and ourselves. We consume to much, we want to much, we need too much, whether it is food or clothes or toys or electronics. Depression is becoming more and more prevalent and obesity is rampant.

The idea that ‘more’ is always good needs to change. There is something like ‘enough’. ‘Enough’ is a marvelous and underrated word, signifying a balance between too little and too much. Life is all about balance. We exist on our planet thanks to this balance. The distance from our star the Sun is just right; not too close and not too far (or hot and cold). In astronomy, this particular distance is called the Goldilock zone (yes, after the little girl who went to visit the three bears). In that same rationale belongs the idea that when you take, you need to give something back. We, at least the people in the West, have lost sight of this balancing act that life is, or should be. And if we do not relearn it, as I think this crisis is showing us loud and clear, we will have to go. The memory of us will soon fade.

But that’s okay, because there will be no one left to remember us.