Every once in a while, we receive a heartfelt testimonial from a client, and we are reminded why we do what we do and the difference we get to make in the lives of those who are going through loss…
2020 was an awful year. This was the case across the country… and the world! If I had to pick a word to describe the entire 12 months, it would be “loss”. I lost a depressing number of things: my home, my independence, my self-belief, but the hardest of all was losing my dad.
He wasn’t blood of my blood. He found my mom when she was at her lowest, and he rescued her. He read her poetry and quoted Romeo and Juliet from his balcony to hers. He loved her so passionately that she eventually had to give in and ask him to marry her! He spoke Dutch to her and gave EVERYONE a new name – not just a nickname – a brand-spanking new one that fit even better than their real one: “Jan Klootoog”, “Mevrou Generaal” and “Oberon”.
And me? He showed me what love looks like by looking at my mom as if she was the sun. He phoned me at midnight, chewing on a pancake, to tell me that he thought I needed to be called. He saw through my happy mask and knew when my heart was breaking…
He was my second father. He was the man who made my mother laugh again. Now, he was gone.
He became a supportive “house-husband” to my busy doctor mom. He learned to cook with passion and set the table with flowers and crystal every single night. He never made my mom feel anything but beautiful, fabulous and adored. He did that for 25 years. And he was gone.
In 2020, my parents had just moved from their beloved – and unbelievably cluttered – home. She had just had a seizure and was more than a little lost. It was mid-Covid and difficult to travel. They were in a new place without being able to invite the neighbours for coffee. Both of them seemed slightly bewildered, but I never doubted that they would work it out hand-in-hand as they had always done. How could he be gone?
My other losses suddenly looked insignificant. I seemed to have forgotten how to move my arms and legs, how to start the car, use my phone. The pain was physical, visceral, real. Then I saw my mom… Everything I felt was amplified in her eyes. She looked as if she was looking for the handle to carry this immense suitcase full of sorrow. She wandered, touching his raggedy jersey, his razor, his slippers. She put lipstick on and fixed her hair, because my granny said that’s what you must do when you don’t know what do. Then it hit her that she had nowhere to go and no-one to ask if she looked okay. She sat down on their bed, absentmindedly patting his pillow, but he was gone.
We had lost him and we were lost. No longer could my mom cuddle next to his “grasshopper body”. No longer could his beloved Scotty, Stoffel, take him for a walk. And no longer could I ask him for a hug. There was a giant Henk-shaped hole in our lives. He was gone.
We simply didn’t know what to do.
But you did. When I couldn’t think, stand or speak, you knew what to do. I could hold my mother and tell that everything was sorted, because you made it so. I could sit with my pain – and my mom’s – and try to breathe. Because you knew what to do. And you did it. So that we could grieve…
