Franz was Franz. He lived just round the corner from us, in Origer street, in the old family home. He was a big man, large head, large hands, large feet. Slow of movement and speech, he seemed to come from a era where time moved at a more leisurely pace than in our hectic world. Everyone in the area recognized Franz by sight, and the "Old Eschers" had known him and his family since he was a child. He was affable and polite. He scrupulously paid his bills. His self-effacing chuckle gave the impression of his constantly overcoming an inherent shyness. In all our dealings with him, Franz was always concerned in case he was intruding.
And who are we? We are the family Greenwood-Hamilius (David and Gaby, with our two children Jessica and Alex). Gaby's father was Franz's second cousin. In fact, due to a quirk of the family tree, they were second cousins twice over. This goes back a couple of generations to the grand-parents, where two daughters of the Muller-Schmit family from Esch married two sons of the Muller-Lorang family from Mondercange, a neighbouring village. So, François and Josephine Muller-Muller were Franz's grand parents and Dominique and Françoise Muller-Muller were Gaby's great grand-parents. This means that Gaby and Franz were second cousin once removed, descending from the Muller-Schmit family, and also second cousin once removed descending from the Muller Lorang family.
We bought our house in an auction in 1983. It is also an old family house, and was where Gaby's father grew up with his grandfather. The house was pretty run down when we bought it, so to save money we did a lot of the work on restoring it ourselves. In practical terms, this meant that I ended up spending a lot of time shoveling sand in front of the house. I remember one day when Franz came strolling up. This was shortly after we had first been introduced. He made a point of taking off his gloves before shaking hands with me, as is the correct etiquette in Luxembourg.
There is a lorry that does the rounds on a Saturday morning delivering drinks door to door. At first, Franz occasionally asked us if we could pick up a crate of bottled water and crate of apple juice for him if he planned to be out that morning. Eventually we got into the habit of picking a couple of extra crates with our usual order, and keeping them on reserve for him. On the morning of the 13th, Franz gave us a phone call to ask if we were in so that he could pick up his drinks. We were just on our way out, so we loaded the water and apple juice into the back of our car and dropped them round the corner on the way. Franz already had the front door open. A wave, a nod, a smile ... and that was the last time we saw Franz.