In the early 60s - back in the days of letter writing - I signed up with an outfit called the International Youth Service. Based in Turku, Finland, it put you in contact with people in countries you were interested in, paid for in international reply coupons. Sometimes a letter would arrive out of the blue from someone looking for a correspondent in your country. One such was Ria Maartense, one of the thirteen children of a postman in The Hague. She and I exchanged hundreds of letters and postcards over the years, though more recently we stayed in touch through social media. But it was via snail mail that I learned this morning that she died earlier this month, aged 74.
It must have been a sudden thing: my last contact with her was in June when she posted a clip on Facebook of her and her dog Jessie dashing round an obstacle course. She’d always seemed as fit as a fiddle, going on long hikes, including the Camino. Perhaps this has spared her the slow decline that others have to suffer, but it will have come as a terrible shock to her family. Very sad.
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