The day he met Frank Lintel is etched in the memory of Luc van de Wiel (58) from Son en Breugel. Just like the last moments he was with him in the hospice. Luc and Frank were best friends from the age of seventeen, until death separated them. “We had an incredible amount of fun. But also meaningful conversations. If I had any problems, I could go to him. That is the meaning of friendship.”
At the end of his life, Frank was in a hospice. Of course Luc visited him regularly. “One time I said ‘I love you’ to him. “Yes, we know that,” he responded. Because as men you don’t say that so easily among each other. But I thought: I’m going to say it before he’s gone. I don’t know whether that is so important, because indeed: we did know.”
“I only realized what he really meant to me when he was gone.”
They had an incredible amount of fun together, Luc and Frank. Luc now calls the meaning of their friendship ‘indescribable’: “I miss him every day. I think that’s strange when someone dies. If he’s alive, it’s obvious and you think ‘Oh damn, I have to call Frank again’. And now I regularly think: ‘If only he were still there.’ I only realized what he really meant to me when he was gone.”
Luc can say exactly how their friendship started: “Reusel, September 3, 1983. During the introductory weekend of my secondary school in Breda, a few people were playing billiards in the café. There was Frank. That was the basis.”
They had a connection: “A sense of humor that only he and I had. We were in stitches and the rest looked like: what have they got? We were both fans of Koot and Bie. They had a politician who said: ‘That was before my time or after my time, but in any case not during my time. And was it during my time? Then I don’t know anything about it.’ Well, that was a running gag between us.”
In high school they saw each other every day. And even after the final exams, the contact remained. Less intensive, but they met about twice a month: “I think it was a matter of quality rather than quantity. When we were together, we had fun.”
“I wanted more depth in our friendship.”
Yet it wasn’t all fun. The friendship deepened. In 2011, on holiday together in Greece, Luc brought it up: “During dinner I said: ‘I want our friendship to deepen a little more.’ I felt safe enough to do that. “It’s you saying it now, because I actually had the same idea,” Frank replied.”
Frank was a ‘social boy’ according to Luc: “He worked in healthcare, with children who needed extra help and guidance. He had a large group of friends. Unlike Luc: “I am quite closed to myself. My world was quite small. Frank was the friend with whom I could talk about my feelings.”
The annual holidays together to Greece came to an end after 2014, because Luc got a girlfriend: “We were on holiday together and I was chatting with my girlfriend on my phone every day. He didn’t like it.” Yet there was no trace of jealousy on the part of the single Frank: “He was fine with it that way. He had so many friends that he was in good contact with. He had his life on track and didn’t really miss anyone.” When Luc got married, Frank was one of his witnesses.
“Sit down for a moment, I have something to tell you.”
When Luc returned from a holiday with his wife in 2017, he went to visit Frank. He assumed they were going to have a nice meal together. Things turned out differently: “He said: ‘Sit down for a moment, I have something to tell you.’ He had had an investigation. It turned out that he had lung cancer, with metastases.”
The sadness was enormous and Frank was in shock. But the two still went out for dinner. “We played our usual jokes. It was a really nice evening.” Luc sighs deeply. “A year later I went to visit him. He was with his mother. A shopping center with a Chinese restaurant was a five-minute walk away. He just made it. The combination of chemo and radiation hit me hard.”
But Frank came out on top. A few months later the cancer was gone. “We still celebrated that. ‘I’m going to work again, I’m going to live again,’ he said.” But a month later, Frank started experiencing complaints again while on holiday. “It turned out to be in his head. He still had a few months.”
“I think he said it to reassure me.”
Luc visited him in the hospital. “He told me, ‘It’s OK. I did what I wanted to do, I’m at peace with it.’ But when he left he also said: ‘Please don’t look back, because then I won’t be able to handle it anymore.’ So in retrospect I think he said that to reassure me. He kept himself big. But with pain and difficulty.”
Luc often visited his best friend in the hospice. He sees Frank deteriorate further and further. And realizes what is coming. Frank died on December 8, 2018, at the age of 51: “It is incomprehensible that at some point someone is no longer there. He leaves an empty place that cannot be filled. And life goes on. But the empty spot remains empty. Maybe that’s a good thing too.”
