Ellen In Amerika!"MY EMIGRATION TO AMERICA AND MY ADJUSTMENT TO LIFE IN CALIFORNIA SINCE SEPTEMBER 2008"

This afternoon, I was going through all my documents stored on my PC. I deleted a bunch of them, and then I found a pdf file of my parents’ wedding picture. They were married 58 years ago this month. My sister Marja sent that original picture some some time ago. Seeing this picture now is really meaningful because my dad died 30 years ago this month, and my mom died this coming October, 27 years ago. I have a lot of pictures of them in our house and among them, their wedding picture. Around this time of the year and during the month of October, I feel sad and angry because they aren’t here anymore. My dad never has seen my children, and my mom has known the oldest one for only 10 months and 10 days. What a joy it would have been if they could have seen all their grandchildren and how well they are doing. And they could have seen me here, living my life so different than before.

I come from a large Catholic family with 3 brothers and 3 sisters. We were a strong family. I mean, we were close, and we did a lot of things together. We were not very wealthy, but we were not considered to be poor either. Still, we had great vacations in the country, and the holidays were wonderful. I remember my mom cooked huge Christmas meals for us, and none of her children ate a thing! Also, from the earliest time I remember until I was at least 11 years old, Mom would, after dinner each night, read two chapters from the “big story book”. We would all sit quietly, listening with open mouths until she finished.  And to think of this, the age difference between the youngest sister Lotty and the oldest brother Jos , is 8 years. With Sinterklaas, a Dutch children celebration, we got lot of presents. They made that event so special.

When I was 20 years old, my dad got sick. For us children, at that moment, it was sudden, but afterwards, we had seen signs he was sick for some time. He had Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It is a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. After a short year, wherein my parents have done literally everything to cure this disease, but unfortunately only costs them thousands of Guldens, he died on March 31, 1980, at the age of 54 years. We were all overwhelmed with sadness, but my mother, who had been all her married life truly in love with my father, almost lost it.  My oldest brother Jos had hours and hours of talks with her. She almost lost her faith in God. I believe, this brother and his wife Truus, have contributed the biggest part of her getting a bit of faith in life back again.

Three and a half  years after my dad had passed away, we were challenged with an even bigger disaster. On the 3rd of October 1983, at 3.15 AM, we received a call  that my mom had a stroke, and we all had to go to the hospital. When we arrived there, they told us it did not look good at all. And to our great sadness, she died 5 hours later. This was almost too much to handle. My mom was such a rock in our lives, we could not live without her. We had to deal with so much. As I said before, we are a close family, and in this hardship, we became even closer. We made sure we all stayed in close contact with each other, and especially the oldest ones took emotional care of the youngest ones. We are blessed that our brothers and sisters in law are like real family. We get along very well.

I was 24 years old when my mom died, I can tell you, it is the fastest way to grow up. But it is the hardest way also. It took me at least 10 years to not think of my parents every single day.
The raw pain is gone, but still it feels unfair that they are not with us anymore. But, it soothes the pain now when we think of the memories we have of them and when we mention them in our talks. That brings them back for a little moment, and that feels as a warm, comfortable blanket.