Kirsten was stillborn in 1991. John spoke about it publicly for the first time in 2021 The Cut Guest. “I found that difficult, although I also thought I had processed it.” In that program, John notices that the sadness has never gone away. “It had happened almost to the day 30 years ago and I realized at that moment that Kirsten could have been 30 years old under different circumstances. We remembered her every year, she was never far away, but suddenly the sadness flew over me anyway back on.”
John and his wife Mariette go through a difficult period after Kirsten’s stillbirth. “The following year a gray veil hung over our lives. It only got better when we were expecting our eldest son, but the sadness remained.”
When someone tells John at the time that he can be happy again at some point, he doesn’t believe it. “But gradually it happened. I’m not saying that you can deal with the loss of a child, because you can’t. I do think that you can find your meaning in life, even become happy again.”
As John gets older, he finds that remembering Kirsten hits him harder. “A song, a text and everything from then comes back at full strength.”
2023-05-17 12:14:28
#John #van #den #Heuvel #candid #stillborn #daughter #process #loss #child
