If death comes at 98, it is a reason to be thankful. That is of course what people tell you, and it is true. One is not allowed to be sad, to mourn the loss. But the contradiction is that it is extremely difficult to live without a person who has always been in one's life, and for so many years. How can one imagine life without that beloved person? When that person is talented, creative, very gifted, kind and generous, it is even harder. If a person is famous, his workshop or painter's studio or writer's den is kept intact, incorporated in a museum. The pen positioned in the right place, the diary or notebook opened, as if the writer is just having a coffee and could come back any minute to go on with his writing. If a person has never acquired fame or wished for fame or recognition, the studio is dismantled, only photographs may remind people of what it looked like. There is this unfinished painting still on the easel, the brushes in an old jam jar, pieces of soiled cloth stained with paint lying around, the multicoloured apron hanging from a hook on the easel. The hall and all the walls overflowing with paintings, drawings, watercolours. It is heartbreaking to clear out that space, sell the house, get rid of the turpentine, the canvasses in various shapes and sizes, the tubes of paint, squeezed in odd places. The smell will linger. Whenever one enters a studio and encounters those familiar smells again, one will be overcome with grief, nostalgia, or just joy. The organ will be sold, the still open music books closed, the private library, so characteristic of the owner and collector, divided among several people. The letters written to dear ones, to fellow believers, all will be shredded, or scattered. Perhaps the life history which we can extract from the many handwritten diaries may be saved, but for whom? Just for children and grandchildren, who will wonder about the life of a parent or grandparent which was so different from theirs, totally alien in a way. But the feeling of love, of togetherness, this bond will stay, in spite of the tangible traces being wiped out, the parental home being lost, sold.  The leather bound family Bible, the art books, the camera's and the photo albums, who will want them? Why do we collect memorabilia when the next generation is not interested, neither in the photo albums with pictures of unknown aunts and uncles, long lost friends and forgotten acquaintances? It is what we feel in our hearts, a love for the essence of the person who died, his or her core. It is not the deeds we remember, although we sometimes do, it is the heart of that person, the spirit, the mind, the attitude towards life and his fellow beings. That is what matters and what we remember. We may never know a person completely, not our own parents, not even ourselves, neither the motives for our behaviour, but we do know if a person is good at heart, if there is not a single bad thought in him or her; a person without guile, a person in whom there is no deceit, a person incapable of hurting anyone wilfully, a person who is able and willing to forgive and forget, a person who is spiritually generous.