One
year without DennisIt lasted almost as long as the first year of his life. But in contrast to the first year, which was full of joy, admiration and love, this year was full of pain and frustration. It feels like it lasted forever, because we miss him so much, and because for us, who were closest to him, it was the most terrible year of our lives. We passed all the circles of hell - pain, frustration, anger and finally are slowly coming to an acceptance of our and his destiny as well as an acceptance of the irreversity of this tragedy.
He is gone... But our blue Planet continues to rotate, and the streets of Copenhagen are still full of laughing young people. We have learnt not to seek his face among them.
This year we have to learn how to live without him and to go on, leaving him behind. To accept his empty and unusually silent floor in our house, his empty room, his empty place at the dining table. However, there will never be an empty place in our hearts - he still lives and will live there and we love him even more.
We have to face the fact that we not only lost him, but we also lost many hopes and other life moments that are connected to him: we will never ever attend his graduation ceremony at the University, will never see him marry, we will never hold his kids in our hands.
Without him we could see more clearly his good role in our family.
First of all, although he always looked like chilling down and doing nothing, our computers, internet, printer etc seemed to work perfectly (almost) by themselves. But as soon he was gone, we faced lots of problems in this area.
It is difficult to underestimate his encouraging role in our family. His constant teasing, jokes could clear out any clouds from the family sky. And of course, none of us can take over this role from him. This place will remain empty.
No one but him called us 'mamik' and 'papan'. No inspiring arguments, where he always managed to proof that he was right using only logic, verbal arguments and normative vocabulary.
No one, on our request to do something, will answer: 'Let me think... (and a second later) No!' with his irresistable teasing grimace.
Fortunately, he left us many nice memories of good and bright moments of our life. Many of them were almost deleted from our memory for a time but now start to pop-up suddenly (probably, now we are on the same wavelength with him more than ever before). Even more, he made us to realise how happy we were as a family, although we did not always understand and appreciate that.
Several times we asked ourselves: if we could choose, would we choose to have him, but to go through all this hell, or not to have him at all. And the answer was without doubts - yes, we would choose again to have him! He was one of the best things that happened to us and we appreciate having him in our lives very much.
For us what was most difficult to accept was the meaninglessness of what has happened. Why did he study at 2 schools simultaneously, learn 5 languages, pass exams at the Gymnasium and then at the University, work?
We were searching for a hidden meaning, we were thinking about the purpose for which he had come into this world and wondered if he had managed to reach his goal for those short 20 years he got.
Of course, we still don't know the answer, but we think he was wiser and more advanced than us in many aspects. We don't know anyone who loved life more than him. Whatever he did: drew, played hockey or badminton, swam, went to the forest, met friends - he was engaged and understood the taste of life. Just look at his photos: he was never caught unhappy!
Another thought that comforts us enormously is that now we come to the conclusion that the length of life is not proportional to its happiness, fullness and fulfilment.
Yes, he had only a very short 20 years, but he experienced fully the most beautiful and sorrowless 20 years. He was healthy, strong, clever, handsome. He travelled and experienced a lot, he lived in 4 countries, he was in love, he was surrounded by many friends, the world was brimming with life all around him. At least, when we look back on our own lives, we see, that our first 20 years were the best part, not darkened by fears, losses, sickness, but full of joy, dreams and happy expectations.
However, life is life and we don't choose our destiny and cannot exchange our cross with other people’s. Of course, we know - we are not the only once who were faced with a sad fate: this world is not perfect and people die every single day, often in meaningless ways.
We didn't need to fight with our grief alone: we got lots of support from many friends, we really could feel their warmth, support and care. It helped us to survive. We are exceedingly thankful to all of them.
Dennis' death helped us to increase the value of friendship in our life, like litmus-paper revealed the real friends. Now we have also learnt to put more attention other's grief and we believe that one day we can really help other people in a difficult moment of their lives.
And finally we are addressing all the people who were close to him - please, remember him. He is alive and here with us while we remember him!