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.