And then it became September 9. We planned to visit my father again later that day, when the hospital rang around half past two in the afternoon. It would be better to come over immediately, because it went worser with my father. So we called a cab and drove to the hospital where he laid in a room for himself now. We sat around his bed and on a moment he said: "It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I see the sun", but it was a real cloudy day without any sunshine at all. Later, I realized that "maybe" he saw something, something we have no idea about? People who had an almost death experience are mostly speaking about a light as well! Is that what he, perhaps, saw? Anyway, I walked to the corridor from time to time, because it became all too much. I also went to it, when they brought some food for us around 17:14 in the afternoon. When I entered the room again, I saw my mother crying and some nurses were running inside. They did what they could do, but it was too late. My father died at 17:15 in the afternoon, very peaceful and within seconds. My mother walked around his bed from one side to another. At the left side he was still looking at her and when she arrived at the other side, he didn’t recognized her anymore and slipped away. Luckily I entered the room at the right time, I would have never forgiven myself when I missed "this final moment". We stayed in the room for awhile we didn’t totally realize that it was all over. Then a nurse came to pick us up and we left the room. It was the last time I saw my father. We talked to her what would happen now and some hours later we went home. Immediately we started to make some final arrangements for the cremation. My father always told us, that when the end was there, he wanted a cremation. The cremation itself took place at September 14, 1982. After his death we also realized why he wanted to go upstairs to his own room so badly the last days when he was at home. He probably knew then already that the end was near because when we searched for his last will (which we knew was laying in his desk) we couldn’t find it till we looked around in the bookcase. There in the middle, in front of us, was my father’s last will laying. He just put it there so we didn’t have to search for it.

The day of the cremation was a sunny day. When the car with my father’s corps arrived here for a last right to the street and along the house he spent the last 11 years of his life. The funeral itself took place around 1 o’clock. There were a lot of people, but, how ironical, the only people who were real family of him phoned us a day before, that they couldn’t come because they both had the flu, so the people who showed up, where relatives and family of my mother or friends of mine. Even some old colleagues, my father worked with in the past, some members of "De Jampot" and of "RSV De Spartaan" were around. We were impressed that so many people paid their last respects.

After the cremation there was time for a little talk and to condole us. Some relatives went with us to our home including my uncle and aunt. My uncle came over on September 10th to help us out with everything. Do you know what’s so ironical about everything? As you all know, my birthday is August 18, just 8 days before my father went ill and do you know what I wanted to ask first for my birthday in 1982? A picture of my father and mother together, but I laid that idea beside me finding it felt ridiculous to ask, especially because I had some strange feelings about it: "When something happened….." Afterwards I still had my regrets about it, as you can imagine. Was there something in the air then that I came up with such an idea? An idea I had never had before in my life. I’ll never know.

Some weeks later we received a phonecall of the graveyard that the urn with my father’s ashes was ready to put into the grave. If we wanted to be there. Of course, we said. When we arrived there, a man asked me or I wanted to carry the urn, but I couldn’t do it so we walked after him to the grave we own for years. I had never been there and obvious my mother hadn’t been there for years either, because when we arrived at the grave we got a big shock. It was hardly a grave, only a small board was standing in the sand. We knew that Marietje (my father’s first wife) laid there and her mother but there was no stone or so standing on the grave. Obvious my father never had the courage to put a stone on it and my mother never asked him about it. So we decided it would be time for a stone as well and after some weeks it was finished and it looks like this:

There’s still place in the grave for my mother and for me as well. In the beginning I went to the graveyard every special day, like birthdays and so on, but now I haven’t been there in years. I have plans to visit the grave again in a couple of week’s time. "If" it was only to tell my father that I worked so hard on our family website and that everybody can read the story about our lives now when they wanted. I think, he’ll be delighted about it.