Heart

The other day I was showing one of my colleagues my ABC book and as he was leafing through it, he said something about March 17th being the day our former colleague died. I wrote a post about that two years ago: click here. I had been the last person to speak to him and H was the person who found him. We had always said that we should visit A's widow some day, to bring a bit more closure to her and to us.

Today we finally went. A day before the second 'anniversary' of that awful day. And she really appreciated it. She had tears in her voice when I phoned to ask whether we could come, she had tears in her voice and her eyes today. She liked hearing our side of the story which also filled in some quite significant gaps for her. She was glad we hadn't forgotten all about her or her husband.

She's not doing well. Her life has lost its shine, its sparkle with her husband's death. He was her rock, her guide. Ever since she had a severe car accident, he did the cooking and quite a bit of the housework. All that was gone in an instant. On top of that she's gluten intolerant, she suffered from breast cancer (while her husband was still alive) and last year she was diagnosed with bone cancer. She only has a few more years to live. Fortunately she has her family and her friends who come by and see her quite often, but it's not the same.

The visit brought closure to both of us as well. Especially my colleague couldn't have done this last year yet, but now he was fine. Also because we were able to give her some answers. When we left we were both presented with a little gift: the heart you see at the top of this post.

In memory of Anton, who died too young...