Who was Ad van Berchum?

Ad and me celebrating the completion of the fence's
first panel.

Many things: father, husband, friend, DIY master, harbinger of good humor and incisive wit. The saddest, by far, is that he now Was. That he Is no more.


I don't believe in the afterlife, in a transcendental soul, in the possibility of re-encounter, of reunion. And if I'm right, then the only permanence is in the memory of the living.

I met Ad at a beach barbecue somewhere in the beginning of 2008, when he and Marjan, his wife, were here in Curaçao to test it out, to find their way around before moving here later that year. They'd be moving into a house on the same street as ours; we'd be neighbors.

Panchita, guarding the planks
for the fence

When they did move, I wasn't here to welcome them; I was in India, and in spite of the fact we'd only met once before, they took care of Panchita, my dog (at that point it was just the one), for a whole month and they did such a great job of it that any time they visited, even years later, just the sound of Marjan's or Ad's voice would drive Panchita into a tail-wagging frenzy.

The friendship with the person that introduced us faded, but ours stayed. Grew. Multiple dinners, drinks at our place or theirs. Thanksgiving 2010, when Maru and Gabriel and Anthony cooked up a storm. 15ths of September, and Ad's love of Mexican food.

And the fence, the unforgettable fence. Ad and Marjan spent two weekends helping me put up that fence--which I had to take down in October because we had a wall built in its stead. But I'll put it back up at the back of the property, facing the house so that the view from inside the house--the living room, the bedroom--is of Ad's fence.

It will always be Ad's fence.

Is it possible to lose someone without having regrets? The time we didn't spend together, the phone calls we didn't make, the conversations we didn't have?