… Now you are under the soil. Gone. For ever. And still so close, so alive. Your voice on the cassette, your photographs, your face a few days ago only, so gentle and sad and yet peaceful. I embraced you to say farewell and to tell you that we are with you, that we won't leave you alone. And you held me back with your skinny arms, you held me and wouldn't let me go. Then I went, waving back at you.

The next day I came with the letter inviting you to the INTERLIT conference 1988 in Erlangen – you couldn't recognize me anymore. Your body was still alive but your mind had gone. You were struggling. You didn't want to leave us.

And then there was my friend's grief who had lost her son the very same morning. And I came back to sit with you, I just sat there watching you, breathing heavily, fighting, fighting for this precious life which had treated you badly; this body whose strength was going to betray you, which you had hated, had refused to accept as the fragile transitory physical side of yourself.

Now I am sitting here on the veranda in the morning sun, where you loved to sit, and listening to Mozart's requiem, which you loved to hear. You loved beauty and peacefulness and yet could never hold it for long.

And then the burial. Your family, your mother, who had lost the third child within a few months. She seemed to be almost with no tears left.

And your family unable to relate to you.

Your father's brother in his speech in the funeral chapel (on Rhodes Avenue, so close to your flat): This child was very gifted, learnt very well, knew English. Went to university, then had to leave the country, went to England. We did not hear from him anymore, only sometimes in the press. Then he came back. He was writing his books. At least he made a living. He did not marry.