This picture was taken in August 2008 in front of the Somontano vineyards in Spain.

Last Wednesday, February 4th 2009, we said goodbye for the last time to my friend and father-in-law Ewald Kooiman. My own father having died in 1991, Ewald took the role of a second father to me, and was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, colleague and friend.

His death, at 70 years of age, came very unexpectedly. The very picture of health, I’ve never met in my life anyone so fit, so health conscious, so careful with his diet, so fanatic of exercise and bodybuilding… but yet his heart stopped on the 25th of January while he was sleeping. He was on holidays, enjoying the sun…

He was at the peak of his career and of his life.

A worldwide famous concert organist and scholar, he was recording for the 3rd time the full organ works of J.S. Bach , this time for the Aeolus label.  He was two thirds through the recording, and it will be a great loss to all the fact that he will never get to finish this task that he so enthusiastically had undertaken.

You can see him and hear him play on this video made during these last recordings:

And this link is to another video made during the recordings.

We will miss his music, but much more so he will miss him, because the void he has left behind will be impossible to fill.

We have (and there are) no words to describe what we are feeling, what he meant to us, how much we love him, the immense feeling of loss, the need to see him again, to give him a big hug, to make some jokes, to tell him that surely this was some ridiculous misunderstanding, that he is not really gone…

…but he is, and our heart is broken.