Danny died at the end of April 2003, almost exactly a year after Christina. In the early morning hours, he jumped from the 820-foot-tall One Atlantic Center in Atlanta. Danny had told me he wanted to go home…

The amount of heroin in his blood would probably have been enough to kill him if he’d waited long enough.

The report said he “had not survived the jump,” which made me burst out into hysterical laughter. That would have been even better!

He left me this letter:

 

Ducky,

You’re probably already suspecting this: I’m not coming back. I’m so unbearably sorry that I’m going like this, but it wouldn’t have been possible any other way—you know that as well as I do. And it has to happen, because I’m scared to wait any longer. Scared of what will come next, and that I won’t be able to do it anymore! You know! If you can’t forgive me for going this way, that’s okay. I just hope you can understand someday.

If you’re reading this, I’m already in the airplane, so don’t drive off looking for me!!!

We’ve already talked about everything. Take care of Maya, watch out for my dad, and for God’s sake, sell that damn car, don’t keep it for sentimental reasons—I wouldn’t get anything out of that!

Stay in our apartment for as long as you want, and take whatever you like with you. If you ever feel lonely, you know where you can go to feel close to me—and where you can’t!

You’re going to be happy—husband, house, children. You’ll see.

 

REMEMBER ME!

And I hope I find my freedom, for eternity!

Love you!

Danny

 

 

After saying goodbye to me again and again, he’d finally left without saying another word. One morning, he was just gone. I knew why: he didn’t want me to follow him.

Danny had put it off for as long as he felt like he could. At the beginning of March, he’d started having major episodes of paralysis. His left arm was practically numb, he’d lost control over various limbs on several occasions, and the tremors had gotten worse all the time. Around mid-April, he’d finally told me he couldn’t wait much longer, for fear that he’d lose the physical ability to put his plan into action.

Theoretically, there should have been huge amounts of heroin left over, but I never found it. I suspect Danny flushed it down the toilet to prevent me from getting my hands on it.

Apart from the PML, Danny never developed any other AIDS-related symptoms. His T-cell counts remained solid all the way until his death—his immune system was essentially intact the whole time, he never progressed to full-blown AIDS.

Though HIV is still incurable, medicine has progressed to the point that it can prevent AIDS from breaking out. With proper treatment, HIV is no longer fatal; people with HIV have a near-normal life expectancy and can live nearly normal lives. Thanks to additional breakthroughs, people with HIV can also have healthy children.

PML still results in death within three to twenty months. Eighty to ninety percent of those who develop it have severely compromised immune systems. Researchers have since discovered that PML is caused by a specific virus that only certain people have in their bodies. Those people acquire the virus in childhood. It is still unclear where it comes from.

I spent many sleepless nights wrecking my head wondering whether Danny got that virus from his father as well.

 

Danny’s panic attacks became much more frequent during the last eight weeks of his life. He was convinced they were from the PML. I think he was just scared—after all, he’d had a tendency toward those kinds of attacks since he was young. Even so, they only made him even more terrified that the PML would change his personality. Nothing of the kind happened, though. Danny remained his old, clearheaded self, right up until his death. He never changed outwardly, either. Anyone who didn’t know him would never have suspected that he was deathly ill.

Ultimately, his death didn’t attract any attention. There wasn’t even a report in the newspaper. As far as the police were concerned, he’d been just another suicidal junkie, an addict with no story of his own. Danny would have preferred to fly under the radar anyway.

Jörg, Marina, and Ricky flew to the United States to help his aunt organize the funeral. Danny had even left his aunt the money to pay for it and expressly requested to be cremated. His wish was granted.

I didn’t join them. We had an agreement.

Three days after his disappearance, before I’d even been officially notified of his death, Danny’s car was picked up. The new BMW he’d taken such good care of for me was hooked carelessly to a tow truck and hauled away. His father had arranged it from prison. The title and registration were in the car, as we’d planned. I never saw the car again. I’d have liked a chance to get in there and take some of my things out of it, but they never gave me a chance.

I also never saw a penny of the money Danny had so desperately wanted me and Christina to have. He’d only been saving it so that we would have a place to go after he was gone, somewhere we would be able to feel at home without him. Just after they took his car, I ran to the bank, only to find that his account was already frozen. Even though Danny had put my name on everything, his father had somehow manage to grab it all right from under my nose.

Danny had never made a will. I don’t think he forgot—he never forgot anything. More likely, he was completely sure that the preparations he’d made would be enough. Who could have known that Danny’s father would get word of his death and his estate so quickly? He couldn’t have known anything about the car, nor about the money in the account. Despite his father’s repeated attempts to change the situation, the two of them hadn’t been in contact for years.

I’d thought the same thing that Danny had: surely a dying man wouldn’t care about all those material possessions. Someone like Danny would have found the very idea ridiculous. What good was it going to do his father? Whatever his motivations, he wanted it all to himself.

Jörg tried to sue for Danny’s estate on my behalf, arguing that he had been Danny’s legal guardian for years. He brought up Danny’s past, even putting forward the theory that his father had deliberately infected him, as Danny had always feared.

There was no way of proving it, though. At the time Danny was infected, the fact that his father was HIV-positive hadn’t been medically documented anywhere. Of course, there was no telling whether Danny’s father had suspected it, or could have suspected it. There was no way of proving that, either.

Jörg lost the trial. According to the judge, standard German inheritance law applied, so his entire estate legally belonged to his parents. Marina was no longer legally competent, so it all went to his father. I was just glad Danny wasn’t there to see it, that he was at least spared that circus and died believing everything would turn out the way he’d planned.

 

After I got word of Danny’s death, I left his apartment, fully believing I would be able to return once more. I wanted to pick up some of his things and donate some of them—along with Christina’s, which we’d never touched—to charity. But I never got the chance: practically the minute I was gone, the locks were changed and everything inside was auctioned off. I couldn’t take anything with me, couldn’t even say goodbye.

Danny’s father even claimed Maya, Danny’s ancient, half-lame pony, and snatched her away from the children’s home, selling her for the slaughter price. Jörg and I moved heaven and earth to find the buyer, and finally drove up to Northern Germany to meet him. I rang the doorbell, told them my story, and begged them to give me Maya back. They let me take the pony but told me that it would break their mentally handicapped daughter Amelie’s heart—they’d bought the pony for her.

So there I was, the person who thought she knew Danny better than anyone else in the world, with no idea what to do. In the end, I left the pony with the family, sparing her hours of travel in a horse trailer. Maya had a place right by the house, in the company of an old jumper horse, and she had Amelie to love and care for her. I think that was what Danny would have wanted. He was always okay with what I decided.

Maya lived another four years. I visited her six times, and the family consulted me on any major decisions about her.

Three years later, Ricky moved to Berlin, where he got married and had two daughters. I lost contact with Simon. Vanessa and I are still friends. Jörg and I stayed in touch for almost seven years after Danny’s death. Alexander is married with a son now, too. We were best friends for years, and I still bring my car to him for repairs.

About two years after Danny’s death, his father died in prison of complications from HIV-related jaundice. I think he just squandered most of his son’s money, at least to the extent that he was able. Everything else, he secretly sent to his wife, allowing her to start a new life: after her husband’s death, Marina reverted to her maiden name and moved back to America. Even today, I still wonder why she hadn’t done that sooner. Danny would have gladly paid her way, and he’d have jumped at the chance to go with her. He’d have been happy to be back home.

Leika died on November 12, 2009, about five weeks before Danny would have turned thirty. Had he made it to thirty, like he’d hoped, he would also have succeeded at outliving my dog, like he’d hoped. If Christina hadn’t died, he would have made it.

I’m sure of it.

I met a new man in 2010. In 2011, we got married and built a little house with a backyard. Out in the country, of course. We have two dogs.

Our son was born in 2014.

When I look at him, I’m infinitely grateful to Danny, because his promise came true. I’m glad I’m still alive, and that’s thanks only to him. And I have my son thanks to him, as well. It’s gratitude I can’t express in words, so I’m not even going to try.

 

In all those years, I never told my husband a thing about Danny, but then I slipped up. He spotted the gap in what he knew about my past, and he asked about it. What was supposed to be a short explanation turned into a week-long report. I showed him photos of Danny, ads he’d modeled for, Danny’s letters and poems. I’d burned most of them as Danny had recommended, but I’d stored a few things away in a box in the basement.

I never forgot him.

Even today, though, it still hurts to think about him.

Sensing that I hadn’t worked through a lot of what happened back then, my husband suggested I write the story out. So I did. For weeks, I ran around with a pencil and a notebook and a distant look on my face, completely caught up in a different time. It was like I was experiencing everything all over again. Night after night, I wrote, grinning and laughing at times, but mostly crying bitter tears. Finally, when I’d put it all down on paper, my husband read our story and encouraged me to type it out on a computer. So I did.

I’d always wanted to donate part of Danny’s money to charity, but since I’d never gotten any of it, it hadn’t happened. So I decided to turn the story into a book and do some good by publishing it. I’m going to donate part of the proceeds from this book to the AIDS hospice in the Black Forest, to a children’s home, and to an organization helping traumatized children.

My long-term goal is to start a foundation in Danny’s name someday, to prevent his fears of being forgotten and “vanishing” from coming true. By doing this, I hope I can keep him as alive in others’ minds as he is in mine, because Danny is still part of my life even today. Shortly after I met him, I started doing tae bo, a fitness trend combining kickboxing, taekwondo, aerobics, and dance. I hoped it would help me keep up with him. I never managed that, of course, but I still do tae bo today.

I also watch a lot of jumpstyle, a form of dance Danny loved. We often traveled as far as Austria with his dance partner so that they could be part of duo-jump battles. Back then, jumpstyle was new and not very popular, but Danny had always prophesied that it would catch on. Its big break came in 2007 with Scooter’s “Jumping All Over The World.” Today, there are even jumpstyle world championships. Danny would have been happy about that. Who knows, he might have even taken part…

I think about his eating habits a lot, too. He could never bring himself to throw away food, so he’d eat leftovers in the most ridiculous combinations: cheese tortellini with raspberry jam, for example, or jelly doughnuts with potato salad…

I’ve stuck to the decision I made thanks to him and Christina—I wouldn’t even think of eating dead animals anymore. I’ve been substituting oat milk for cow’s milk for years, too, and the only eggs I eat are from the free-range farm around the corner. My husband went along with it, so now we’re both vegetarian. His initial worries that not eating meat would keep him from doing sports turned out to be unfounded, obviously. He and I run a half-marathon together every year. Danny was the best example of the fact that top athletes don’t need meat.

I still have the bike he gave me. Years later, long after the red lacquer had peeled away, I repainted it. Royal blue, of course.

I’m incredibly glad and grateful to have met Danny. He kept me from sinking into the uniform sludge of the masses. I’ll always be different, I’ll always go through life with my eyes open, free of prejudice and rigid expectations, able to swim against the current. I’ll never be content with seeing the obvious anymore—I’ll always try to look behind the façade.

My time with Danny shaped me forever. I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that our house is on a hill. When I get up in the morning, I start by opening the blinds and looking out over the vineyards into the sky. Sometimes I go out onto the balcony to gaze out across the valley below me, and then out to the horizon. That’s when I know I’m home!

 

In loving memory of

Tina and Danny!

 

***

 

 

Coming out soon:

Visit to get a free reading sample of “SO NEAR THE ABYSS”, Part 2 of The Danny Trilogy!