Until We Meet Again

- Until we meet again - Photo by Pietje Kobus. Indigenous Peoples Day 2017, Santa FE, NM.

Alexander’s passing read the subject line. Holding the warm coffee cup in both hands I stared at my computer screen as new emails popped one by one into my inbox. I set the mug on my desk and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. The email was from Alexander’s wife. Surely, she didn’t mean…it couldn’t be…had he been sick? For a few seconds, which seemed like minutes, I hesitated and then I clicked to open the email.

“Next time I’m in The Netherlands I’ll look you up” I had written Alexander. When I was visiting family in The Netherlands again he was on my mind. Driving off the ferry from Dover to Dunkerque making my way north I noticed the exit sign for the village he lived in now.  I made an excuse - next time - I thought. After all there is always a next opportunity. “I’ll see you,” he’d replied, “until we meet again.” I imagined a broad smile playing on his thin lips, a glisten in his blue eyes as he typed up the words. Always so full of enthusiasm. It would be his last email to me.

My mom went to the funeral and talked to his wife. “We kind of knew,” she said with a certain calm in her voice “we were playing hide-and-seek with each other.” Alexander had been on the waiting list for heart surgery. They even considered getting an operation in Belgium. It was too late and Alexander died in his sleep at age 38. His body so grown that it almost touched the glass of the coffin. A portrait of a smiling Alexander with thick shining curls sat in front of the casket.

Until we meet again Alexander. You were my first love; the one I fell head over heels in love with over a Kenny Marks’ gospel concert. You were my first devastating heartbreak; three months of relentless crying with ABBA ‘The Winner Takes It All’ on repeat on my cassette player. Sometimes I think I see you in a crowd. I catch a glimpse of you in other people’s faces, in the wildflowers you knew by name, in DJs’ voices, a curl in a neck and the naïve enthusiasm of youth missionaries.  

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