Sharing shit with a friend
THURSDAY, June 24 – It’s close to midnight and Sander is dead tired, but he insists on coming with me when I take Elsa out. He wants to tell me something and there’s no need for his little brother to hear it.
In fact there’s nothing to tell, but he wants me to know that he had a really good talk with C’s older daughter P. They’re the same age and they’ll be going to the same school back in Amsterdam. They found each other within the exchange of their own personal shit. Big differences, but even bigger similarities: the death or departure of a parent. Loss, that’s what they talked about.
‘And it really helped a lot to finally be able to talk to somebody about it,’ he said suddenly. He doesn’t want me ‘to be offended or anything’, since he knows he can always come to me. But he also wants me to know that there’s something that he’s able to share, something recognizable, with a friend. I give him a hug and say that friendship, true friendship, may well be the most important thing in life.
Diary of a Widower 