Wish you were here

When I eat our favourite chocolate, dark with chilli pepper, that most people wouldn’t even dare trying…

When I read a good book, and I would like to read a paragraph to you or send it to you by e-mail…

When I try to explain a beauty of a sunset to someone, and everybody who is not you finds it so cheesy and old-fashioned…

When I visit a new city, and I’m buying post-cards, and I want to send one to you, and to write that address I never went to, but I still know it by heart…

When it’s your birthday, and I can’t call you anymore, and say: Happy birthday, and hear you say: Oh, it’s St Patrick’s Day! I have a good reason to get drunk…

And when it’s my birthday, Saint Lucy’s Day, and you no longer wish me a happy birthday, holding the door of your house open so that I can hear the girls with candle-lit crowns singing…

When I hear a joke only you and I would find funny…

When I hear a song you used to like so much…

When I remember those troubled times in which we had met, and how much fun we have shared, against all odds…

When I see your photo I put in the frame to remind me forever of you…

When I look at all those presents I got from you in all these years we have spent together, and I was still getting them later, even 20 years later…

I miss you.

And most of all I miss you when I realize I will never see you again, and that for years I took our friendship for granted. I was changing the countries, you were travelling, we talked on the phone, wrote to each other, and it was supposed to last a life-time. And it did. You had such a full life, I can not complain about mine either, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still would like to share so many things and thoughts with you.

Wish you were still here, my friend…