Gert

[Peter Korsten]

So we're 18 hours on. I didn't get to sleep much last night.

I wanted to share these two photos that were taken in our home. It was 
May 2004, and in the photo in our kitchen you can see our infant son, 
who was only 1 year old at the time, and still drinking from his bottle 
(on the table).

Gert called him "the Little Captain", because he's called Jean-Luc and 
is indeed named after the Star Trek: The Next Generation character. Gert 
also played for him, Jean-Luc fell asleep (somehow, a recurring theme) 
and slept for I don't know how many hours straight. He'd never slept 
that long before, and never since.

The Little Captain is 16 years old now and 172 cm, or 5'8", in length. 
He's really grown since we last met Gert, around Christmas 2016. Gert 
would have been happy to see the progress our son has made. After all, 
he's known him since he was a baby.

In the second photo, you can see Gert in our third bedroom, using our 
ironing board as a keyboard stand. That same blue Electribe is sitting 
on my desk now.

We probably/possibly would have visited him and Kristin if we'd made it 
to the Netherlands in 2018. However, things went a little awry that 
year. I struggled at work, lost my job while in my probation period, was 
unemployed for a few months, had a well-paid job working from home 
during the month of October, and lost that as well. It was then that I 
decided to hijack my son's appointment with the psychiatrist, and I was 
diagnosed with a clinical depression. And "not a mild one either", in 
the doctor's words.

So now you know why I have had to drop so many things, including the 
Music Bar. I have a new job, which I enjoy and where I can walk to in 
under half an hour (if you know the traffic situation in Malta, that's a 
godsend), but I don't have the energy for much of anything else.

That depression is being taken care of by anti-depressants, which work 
remarkably well (and have some unfortunate side-effects, but I won't get 
into those) if the cause is purely physiological. Which it is: there's a 
higher risk to it if you're on the autistic spectrum. Which I am: a mild 
form of Asperger's Syndrome that I hide very well (even from trained 
psychologists), especially since I became aware of it some 12 years ago. 
Gert knew about it. Now you do too.

It's strange, that your own brain can make you believe that it'd be 
better if you weren't there. It wouldn't. Life is too precious to throw 
away on an endorphin imbalance. Literally, when I upped my dose to 100 
mg, it was as if the dark clouds lifted slowly, within a matter of hours.

The ironic thing about anti-depressants is that you feel mellow at 
worst. Those endorphins are produced constantly, so I'm finding it 
difficult to feel sad, which I very well should be feeling. It's more 
like... an emptiness? A void that wasn't there two days ago? Or perhaps 
it hasn't quite sunk in yet. I don't know. Maybe some part of me is 
pretending that it's just a bad dream.

We're all dealing with it in our own way. My wife is profoundly shocked, 
and our son, well, it's always difficult to tell with him.

I'm honoured to have known Gert and called him my friend. Everybody 
knows about his kindness, gentleness, hospitality and generosity. If you 
knew him a little bit better, below that eloquent and sonorous surface, 
sometimes other characteristics peeked through: perhaps regret, or 
disappointment, or bitterness. Never much, of course, but I did perceive 
them to be there, what with my limited skills of reading people.

It made him who he was, a beautiful, imperfect person who touched and 
changed everybody he met. I find it difficult to make friends, let alone 
good friends, but with Gert, it was no problem. And I believe that was 
due to him for the most part.

He will be missed.
/
//I never dreamt that I would get to be//
//The creature that I always meant to be//
//But I thought in spite of dreams//
//You'd be sitting somewhere here with me/

- Peter
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