Danny

Sometimes I am thankful for things I hated at first… like for having had the chance to meet 2 men in my live I adored…

The first one (also in the biblical sense) stepped in my life at the american embassy in Berne, next to where we used to go swimming in summer as teens (called the KWD)… He was stationed there. I was helping my best friend and her mom give swimming lessons 3 evenings a week. And there was this very mysterious and handsome blond, young man, lying on his belly... reading. (!) While his friends were flirting, joking with the "Barbie's" and swimming.. he was reading... At least thats what he wanted me to think (he admitted to me much later). It took him 3 weeks to address me with a short: good evening miss! How polite! I was little over 16 and very frustrated... "good evening miss" was definitively not what I wanted to hear from him. But its all I got for the next 2 weeks. It was Joe, his older friend, a funny redhead covered in freckles, who actually asked me out in his name. Thanks Freckles. All I could think was: 5 weeks for a coffee, he better be worth it! And he was!

I used to call him Danny because he resembled an actor from his favorite TV show: tour of duty.

I showed him my Switzerland, the lakes, the mountains, the rivers on his days off… we spend days just walking and talking... My first overnight hiking, trough the Wallis and Engadin were with him… and when he talked about his home in Watertown NY, that island state park (dont remember the name) he went camping with his dad, I was there with him. I loved to watch him, and those sparkles in his eyes, while he talked about his family, his friends in High School, his pranks... The little dimples that formed on his cheeks when he smiled... 

I used to read in german to him, so he would learn how certain things where pronounced… He then would read his two favorite books to me in english. Zen & the art of motorycle maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, and on the road by Jack Kerouac. Still my favorite books… He wanted to show me so much, about himself… To cheesy? Well... stop reading then.. And BTW.. I am swiss, thats what we are...

Later I even discovered that he had asked my dad to be allowed to ask me to marry him… My dad didn't like american’s, he was a little boy in WW2 in Italy and saw things he never shared with us, but witch must have been “unpleasant”. But he was impressed by this guys guts and determination, and agreed. 


Danny died before that. On a sunny, warm Sunday in may, the 15. it was the warmest day measured until then... Funny the things we remember... We were on Holiday with two of his friends. It was a diving accident. He drowned. Or maybe he had stopped breathing before the air went out. I don't know. And I don't want to know... The cave collapsed and all I remember is that pink cloud out of his mask and his thumb sign to me and Freckles. UP! Freckles turned me around and we started the emergency resurfacing procedure. He held my arms so hard I bruised. No one ever looked at me that way before and ever again. He held my buoyancy compensator with such a firm grip, that I gave in. I just gave in...


I’l never forget Danny's eyes… they could change from that ice clear pale blue of a frozen lake in the mountains, to the deepest skyblue of a warm and cloudless winter day… On February 23. 2011 he would have been 46 years old… (witch is why I wrote this...) when I think hard, I can still remember how his kisses felt…

Today I am thankful for the love I was allowed to share, and for the strength I found, where I didn't expect it. And for my friends who kept me going after that…

And I am thankful for that one night, 19 years ago, I took a cab, after a hard night-shift at work… I never took a cab from this company before… That night I looked into the most peaceful and loving grey eyes I had ever seen, and I knew I was finally home… We got married on February 25. 1994.

And you know what? He still kooks at me with the same amazement and love in his eyes… 

So if I got to go today, I'l go overwhelmed to have had that luck, not once but twice!

Yes I am happy…very, very happy...