A Family Gathering to Remember: A Bittersweet Farewell

My sister arranged it this year. We were going to eat the inheritance. First to Groesbeek, from there with three cars to Mookerheide hunting lodge, a fairytale castle from 1904 in Art Nouveau style. We walked around it and then to an Italian restaurant in the small shopping center of Molenhoek. The owner does it on the side, in addition to a civil service life since her Italian husband died. On the wall is a photo from a summer holiday long ago. She is blonde, he is Italian, beaming at the camera.

A large table in the middle of the place. Lucie van Roosmalen (8) and Leah van Roosmalen (6) looked up to my sister’s much older daughters. My brother informed us by telephone that Valys, the transport service for the elderly and people with a chronic illness or disability, was late again. My mother hated Valys too, they were once catapulted together because a driver drove away before they had put on their seat belts. My brother said, “They always drop you off and pick you up too early.”

There was one chair too many at the table, so it was as if she were still there. She would undoubtedly have found it noisy, eating too little or too much, but it could also have been her character that she kept repeating that she enjoyed it.

My brother was already there after the amuse and the starter, with bags full of sausage rolls. Leah van Roosmalen (6) was so obsessed with his artificial eye that he eventually explained it to her patiently.

We toasted my mother. After an hour and a half the Valys taxi was a few streets away, I took him there. Then it was over. We had also finished talking, but we still had a nice time without saying much to each other.

I still thought about my mother.

She would probably have collapsed in the last hour, but once she got home she would have called to say that she thought things had gone well.

“I think it went well. Everyone thought it went well. Did you also think it went well?”

We didn’t talk about my father. It was difficult to imagine him in this setting, it was all too long ago for that. While he was alive, he did not fail to emphasize how meaningful it was to come together during our meaningless existence. I remember self-made proverbs such as ‘We are all just grains of sand in the desert’ and ‘We are all just leaves in the forest. Ultimately, nothing will change if something blows away.’

Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.

Share Email the editor
2023-12-26 21:13:45


#Column #Catapulted