21/08/2026
16 years ago today.
I had already been awake since 4:30 in the morning.
It became one of the darkest days of our lives.
The father of my children, Franz, died.
He was only 54.
Our children were 10 and 15.
And suddenly, the three of us had to figure out how to continue a life that had changed overnight.
Looking back now, 16 years later, I somehow believe that was simply the time we were given together.
Not nearly enough according to us. But life seems to decide for us how much time we are given
It was hard. Very hard.
We fought to survive.
We cried.
Sometimes we cried and laughed almost at the same time.
And somehow, life continued.
If someone asked me how I survived, I honestly have no idea.
I just did.
Somehow, we did.
People say time heals.
I’m not sure I believe that.
I think time makes the pain more bearable.
The loss doesn’t disappear.
And neither does the love.
But the human heart has an extraordinary ability to survive.
A part of it can almost die with someone we lose, and somehow, slowly, it learns to live again.
To laugh again.
To make plans again.
To be happy again.
And even to love again.
Years later, when I found love again, someone suggested that perhaps my grief hadn’t been real.
That was cruel.
As if learning to live again somehow erased the love that came before.
It didn’t.
It never did.
Loving life again is not loving someone we lost any less.
One of Franz’s last wishes was that Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World would be played at his funeral.
And it was.
For years afterwards, I cried whenever I heard that song.
How strange, I sometimes thought.
What a wonderful world?
When mine had just fallen apart.
But 16 years later, I think I finally understand it differently.
Life is not wonderful because nothing terrible happens.
It can break our hearts.
We lose people we thought we couldn’t live without.
We struggle.
We fall.
We get up.
We cry.
And somehow, we laugh again too.
The heart makes room for both.
For the people we have lost.
For the people who are here.
For the life we had.
And for the life that is still waiting for us.
Not by forgetting.
Not by loving less.
continue at the comment section…
