i still haven't explained what the mysterious email was, that i was so worried about opening, two weeks ago.

it was from bjoern, nils brother.

i had emailed him earlier this month, something i had thought about doing ever since i found out about nils death via his brother's website (and google).

it had felt weird to write bjoern, nils' brother, because we have never met, but i wrote him a well-thought-through email, in essence very similar to what i wrote here, actually.
i wrote about how i had met nils through d., what knowing him had been like for me, how we had lost touch, how i had come across the leaflet for the publishing house while cleaning up and had typed his name into google, how i had always expected to hear from him again and sit in a bar in st.pauli drinking red wine again one fine day.
i expressed my condolences, how much it had hurt, and that i can not estimate how painful it must have been for the family. i thanked him for the website because knowing something is better than not knowing.

it was a good email that i wrote, but i still felt unsure and insecure about it, simply because i didn't want to pressure bjoern at all, my main objective was to make a connection to someone that knew nils and share the emotions.

bjoern's return email was fabulous.

he wrote that he was thankful that i had taken the time to contact him, that reading about my time with nils had brought back memories for him, that plenty of other friends of nils had done the same since the website was up, and that knowing how many people are missing nils is making it easier to live with the hole his death has torn into the lives of everyone who knew nils.

the only thing that startled me is what he wrote about d.: it gave me the impression that d. has not been in contact with nils' family and hence does not know that he is dead.

it's a strange feeling, being unsure whether d. knows, but i realised i am in no position to do anything about it and just got to live with it. it would be odd to ask nils brother whether d. knows about this, it would be even weirder to contact d. for the first time in months (6 months, specifically), and ask "do you know whether nils is dead?" or just strike up casual email conversation about nothing - when we did that in september (the first time in years), it failed quite miserably after one email each.
- there is nothing left that d. and i have to talk about, and i quite honestly do not feel the need to talk about anything with him anyway. apart from this, maybe.

above all, i realised that it's none of my business to get involved in the friendship d. and nils had. i suspect it's quite likely that d. still thinks nils is living happily ever after on st.lucia, but what? they did have the on-and-off type of friendship happening after all, with weeks of intense contact followed by months with little, and who am i to get invovled here and step in and tell d. how bad and terminal loosing contact has been this time.

i know that in am no position to get involved here. but it still feels very weird.