- Joined
- May 21, 2011
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Well people, I don't know where to start, but I had to vent and share this story with my fellow Beckerheads/forumites/...you guys and girls.
In short: the house in which I've grown up in for a large part is going to be taken down. But there's more history to it.
The house that is the subject of this story, is the house where my father grew up in. His father built it and raised his family there. I never got to know my grandfather, he died in 1985 and I was born in '90, and I never knew my grandmother that well either (she died when I was 6) but the other 3 inhabitants I saw daily. I'm talking about two brothers and one sister of my father. They never got married, and they've always lived together in the house they grew up in. My dad and one other borther of him did get married and moved away. That uncle lives a few kilometres from here, but my dad bought a parcel a couple of hundred metres away from the house he grew up in. Anyway, back to the residents of that house: one aunt, two uncles. Both of them were older than my dad. My dad's from 53, uncles from '38 and '45 and my aunt from '34. So, as you might notice, they had a respectable age. Most grandparents of the kids I went to school with had their age, and they pretty much fulfilled that role for me. I came there every day at noon to eat at lunch break from school. I came there pretty much every evening as well. From now on I'll start to use their names because that's more convenient. The aunt's name was Leontine, my oldest uncle was Louis and then there was Fons. They used to have a small grocery store, but were outcompeted when bigger chains arrived in the area, so they had to shut down. The youngest of my uncles worked in Antwerp in the diamond industry, doing manual labour. They never had a lot of money or anything, but they didn't live in poverty or anything since they relied for a whole lot on themselves. They had a large greenhouse, and some land on which they grew vegetables, fruit and the like. They had pidgeons and used to have cows, goats,... But that was before my time. They used to be farmers before they had that shop.
Anyway, that's where I spent my days when I was a kid. They fed me, taught me a lot of skills, surrounded me with warmth. Louis was also my godfather, and I got along with him very well. They always spoke highly of me since I got good grades in school, and encouraged me to keep going the way I was headed.
Sad story inbound...
Fast forward a few years. I was 14. My aunt Leontine had some health issues and went to the hospital for a check up. She was diagnosed with cancer on her peritoneum. That was a blow for the family, but she was a fighter. She got chemo, lost all her hair, lost a lot of weight, but she 'won' the battle and was declared cured. That's what she and everyone else thought atleast. Two years later, it was back and seemed to be stronger than ever. In the summer of 2006 it became clear that she was losing her struggle against this terrible disease, but she never gave up hope or gave up fighting. She lost a lot of strength, lost a lot of weight again, but she had her hopes up. At the end of August of 2006, uncle Louis had to undergo surgery to his heart. He needed to get a bypass.
The surgery went great, we went to see him at intensive care when he just woke up, and he wanted to see me first. He couldn't say a lot, but he squeezed my hand and held it for a long time. He new I was there, so I talked to him and he listened. A couple of days later he was at medium care, everything going OK.
A day after our visit at medium care, we got a call. Uncle Louis had had a 'stomach bleeding' (don't know if that's correct English). Since he had lost a lot of blood during surgery, combined with this internal bleeding, his brains had been out of oxygen for a while. It had happened during the night, so the nurses didn't notice anything. He had slipped into a coma. After a week or two, the doctors made it clear that he was not going to recover, he was not even going to wake up. Wow. The family pretty much was perplexed. We didn't know what to do, everything was chaos. He was kept alive by machines, but that's not something he would've wanted. He always said: If I ever can't walk anymore, or have to shit my pants or whatever, I'll make sure I can get on top of a staircase so I can throw myself down. He didn't want to rely on someone else's help for anything. Without even the slightest chance of recovery, my dad, his two other brothers and my aunt were forced to choose: keep him alive with the machine, but then he would pass away withing a two week timespan, or just shut the machine down and then it wouldn't even take two days. They had to make that decision on Monday, somewhere at the end of September 2006. Imagine you have to make that choice, it ain't easy. With his will in mind, they decided that it was best to just shut the machines down.
One day later, Tuesday, end of september 2006. At noon, as always, I went to my aunt Leontine and now uncle Fons to eat. The atmosphere was everything but joyful, for obivous reasons. We talked a bit, talked about uncle Louis, and I went back to school.
I just got home frome school that Tuesday, about 3.40 PM and I got a call from my aunt. She was in panic and was shouting: please hurry, come over here because Fons is lying on the ground next to the greenhouse and he isn't moving anymore. What. This cannot be happening. I ran to my dad who was in the shower at that time, and he said something like: what the hell? You go already, I'll be right there. So I arrived at my aunt's house a minute later (only 300 metres away from where I live) and she was at the front of the house, crying. I rushed to the back and I saw uncle Fons. He was lying there, on his belly. Not moving. Cold. Dead. I asked if she had called the ambulance and she didn't, so I ran inside and took care of that, also called the doctor. I then jumped over the ditch that ran next to their house and went to get the neighbours, of which the husband is a cousin of my dad etc. When I came back, my dad just arrived. He looked at me with unbelief in his eyes and I didn't say anything, but just nodded in a negative sense, that my uncle wasn't alive anymore. He hadn't even seen him yet, but my dad then collapsed on top of me, filled with grief, agony, pain, disbelief. I had never seen my dad cry until that moment, until I was 16, on a day that should have been a nice, relatively hot Autumn evening. I set him down against a wall and told him to calm down, since he's quite a heavy man -I didn't want anything to happen to him either-.
The doctors came and couldn't do anything except acknowledge that Fons had passed away. Coronary artery rupture. He died with a lighter and cigarette in his hands.
A day later, uncle Louis passed away at the hospital. They were burried together on the same day. The odd thing is, they don't know from each other they're dead. As far as Fons knew, Louis was still in a coma. As far as Louis knew, if he even knew anything at that time, nothing was wrong with Fons...
My aunt's health didn't get any better either. A few months later, on the 8th of January, she lost her struggle against cancer. The 12th of January is my birthday. I got a card. It was from her. She had written it the day before she died. She had given it to my dad and said she would love to give it to me myself, but if she couldn't, he had to give it to me. Well, I paused here for a few minutes before continuing since that still gets me... So, I lost 3 of my best friends, in less than 4 months time. It took a lot of time for me and the family to get over it. But you have to.
The house was sold since we couldn't afford to keep it (not a good relationship with that other uncle). The new owner made the old store into a daycare for little kids. It wasn't profitable I guess, so they decided to resell it. So it was sold again, a few months ago. The new owner wanted to take it down and build a new house. He has every right to, he's the owner anyway. Coincidence or not, the new owner worked with my dad, so they know each other. A couple of weeks ago, my dad asked if he could collect the stones from the pavement around the house. My grandfather had made those himself and they were very durable -speaks for itself since they've been there for over 60 years-. The owner had no use for them and decided he could have them. So my dad and I went there and collected most of them. A few had to remain for the new owners to be able to pull up on the driveway. We were allowed to pick those up yesterday, since they're going to tear everything down this week. So that's what we did. The last week, those people had been quite busy, removing windows, breaking out doors. Nothing looked anymore as I remembered it. I decided to stroll through the house one last time yesterday. Relive some memories. Touch the pavement inside on which I played with toy soldiers and the like. Touched the wallpaper that was still the same as I remembered. I went upstairs to check the bedroom in which I slept for a lot of nights. I blew the dust from the sink in the kitchen, where my aunt would make the best fries éver. Even though it's been 6-7 years, it still hurts. A lot. I noticed that when I walked through the house. I notice it while I'm writing this.
A few items must have remained in the house after we took out the furniture and the belongings of my aunt and uncles, tucked away here and there, because we found some stuff in the rubble. My dad asked if we could take that too, and they didn't mind since one of the following days, it would go inside a dumpster.
So here are a few pics. The last items we took home from that house. Maybe they're silly, but some of 'em mean a lot to me, but especially for my father.
A gauge for the level of water in their well, as well as for their fuel tank.
Leather belt with which a cow was held in the barn, over 40 years ago, so my dad said. The cow's name was Caroline. The chain was used for one of their goats. Also, becker content. Used the 14 to cut down the belt from where it was still hanging. It had popped up when the new owners removed the false ceiling.
Copper pump that was attached to their well, for watering the plants in their backyard. I used that thing MANY times. The previous owner wanted that to use the waterwell himself, but now since it was going to be removed anyway, the new owner said we could have it.
Here are some of the stones from the pavement (if that is the correct word). You can see they're quite thick. They're quite heavy too.
We already used the previous batch to pave a piece of the backyard and our greenhouse.
And last, but not least, we took home an improvised bench from left overs from the gutter in front of that house. Uncle Fons used to sit on it every day, smoke his cigs there. Watch people drive by. Some stopped to have a chat. On summer evenings, people from their generation used to gather around that bench. Chairs were put next to it, and they talked and talked until it got dark (and beyond). I remember very well that uncle Fons used to embarrass me on purpose, when I was sitting next to him on that bench, he then used to whistle to girls my age when they drove by on their bikes, and yelling if I wasn't something for them. He used to get good laughs from that, while I was left blushing. I hated it at the time, but when I think back of it I have to smile
.
So yeah, that was that. The last remnants we took home from that house. The house will be levelled the next week or so. A house my dad grew up in. A house in which I spent most of my childhood. A house in which we shared joy, and shed tears, especially in those few dramatic months. It had stood there for 7 more years, but now, it is time to move on completely. It's the end of an era. Not the end of my memories.
I hope I wasn't too sentimental, and that you guys enjoyed the story. It's a story of mixed feelings. I'm glad I've been there a last time. I'm glad that I've been able to get to know and care so much about the people that took care of me over there. I'm glad we could bring a few things home. But I'm sad we had to. I'm sad they aren't there anymore. But now, maybe this is a chance to leave it all behind, since the visual reminder of that era -the house- will be gone soon.
In short: the house in which I've grown up in for a large part is going to be taken down. But there's more history to it.
The house that is the subject of this story, is the house where my father grew up in. His father built it and raised his family there. I never got to know my grandfather, he died in 1985 and I was born in '90, and I never knew my grandmother that well either (she died when I was 6) but the other 3 inhabitants I saw daily. I'm talking about two brothers and one sister of my father. They never got married, and they've always lived together in the house they grew up in. My dad and one other borther of him did get married and moved away. That uncle lives a few kilometres from here, but my dad bought a parcel a couple of hundred metres away from the house he grew up in. Anyway, back to the residents of that house: one aunt, two uncles. Both of them were older than my dad. My dad's from 53, uncles from '38 and '45 and my aunt from '34. So, as you might notice, they had a respectable age. Most grandparents of the kids I went to school with had their age, and they pretty much fulfilled that role for me. I came there every day at noon to eat at lunch break from school. I came there pretty much every evening as well. From now on I'll start to use their names because that's more convenient. The aunt's name was Leontine, my oldest uncle was Louis and then there was Fons. They used to have a small grocery store, but were outcompeted when bigger chains arrived in the area, so they had to shut down. The youngest of my uncles worked in Antwerp in the diamond industry, doing manual labour. They never had a lot of money or anything, but they didn't live in poverty or anything since they relied for a whole lot on themselves. They had a large greenhouse, and some land on which they grew vegetables, fruit and the like. They had pidgeons and used to have cows, goats,... But that was before my time. They used to be farmers before they had that shop.
Anyway, that's where I spent my days when I was a kid. They fed me, taught me a lot of skills, surrounded me with warmth. Louis was also my godfather, and I got along with him very well. They always spoke highly of me since I got good grades in school, and encouraged me to keep going the way I was headed.
Sad story inbound...
Fast forward a few years. I was 14. My aunt Leontine had some health issues and went to the hospital for a check up. She was diagnosed with cancer on her peritoneum. That was a blow for the family, but she was a fighter. She got chemo, lost all her hair, lost a lot of weight, but she 'won' the battle and was declared cured. That's what she and everyone else thought atleast. Two years later, it was back and seemed to be stronger than ever. In the summer of 2006 it became clear that she was losing her struggle against this terrible disease, but she never gave up hope or gave up fighting. She lost a lot of strength, lost a lot of weight again, but she had her hopes up. At the end of August of 2006, uncle Louis had to undergo surgery to his heart. He needed to get a bypass.
The surgery went great, we went to see him at intensive care when he just woke up, and he wanted to see me first. He couldn't say a lot, but he squeezed my hand and held it for a long time. He new I was there, so I talked to him and he listened. A couple of days later he was at medium care, everything going OK.
A day after our visit at medium care, we got a call. Uncle Louis had had a 'stomach bleeding' (don't know if that's correct English). Since he had lost a lot of blood during surgery, combined with this internal bleeding, his brains had been out of oxygen for a while. It had happened during the night, so the nurses didn't notice anything. He had slipped into a coma. After a week or two, the doctors made it clear that he was not going to recover, he was not even going to wake up. Wow. The family pretty much was perplexed. We didn't know what to do, everything was chaos. He was kept alive by machines, but that's not something he would've wanted. He always said: If I ever can't walk anymore, or have to shit my pants or whatever, I'll make sure I can get on top of a staircase so I can throw myself down. He didn't want to rely on someone else's help for anything. Without even the slightest chance of recovery, my dad, his two other brothers and my aunt were forced to choose: keep him alive with the machine, but then he would pass away withing a two week timespan, or just shut the machine down and then it wouldn't even take two days. They had to make that decision on Monday, somewhere at the end of September 2006. Imagine you have to make that choice, it ain't easy. With his will in mind, they decided that it was best to just shut the machines down.
One day later, Tuesday, end of september 2006. At noon, as always, I went to my aunt Leontine and now uncle Fons to eat. The atmosphere was everything but joyful, for obivous reasons. We talked a bit, talked about uncle Louis, and I went back to school.
I just got home frome school that Tuesday, about 3.40 PM and I got a call from my aunt. She was in panic and was shouting: please hurry, come over here because Fons is lying on the ground next to the greenhouse and he isn't moving anymore. What. This cannot be happening. I ran to my dad who was in the shower at that time, and he said something like: what the hell? You go already, I'll be right there. So I arrived at my aunt's house a minute later (only 300 metres away from where I live) and she was at the front of the house, crying. I rushed to the back and I saw uncle Fons. He was lying there, on his belly. Not moving. Cold. Dead. I asked if she had called the ambulance and she didn't, so I ran inside and took care of that, also called the doctor. I then jumped over the ditch that ran next to their house and went to get the neighbours, of which the husband is a cousin of my dad etc. When I came back, my dad just arrived. He looked at me with unbelief in his eyes and I didn't say anything, but just nodded in a negative sense, that my uncle wasn't alive anymore. He hadn't even seen him yet, but my dad then collapsed on top of me, filled with grief, agony, pain, disbelief. I had never seen my dad cry until that moment, until I was 16, on a day that should have been a nice, relatively hot Autumn evening. I set him down against a wall and told him to calm down, since he's quite a heavy man -I didn't want anything to happen to him either-.
The doctors came and couldn't do anything except acknowledge that Fons had passed away. Coronary artery rupture. He died with a lighter and cigarette in his hands.
A day later, uncle Louis passed away at the hospital. They were burried together on the same day. The odd thing is, they don't know from each other they're dead. As far as Fons knew, Louis was still in a coma. As far as Louis knew, if he even knew anything at that time, nothing was wrong with Fons...
My aunt's health didn't get any better either. A few months later, on the 8th of January, she lost her struggle against cancer. The 12th of January is my birthday. I got a card. It was from her. She had written it the day before she died. She had given it to my dad and said she would love to give it to me myself, but if she couldn't, he had to give it to me. Well, I paused here for a few minutes before continuing since that still gets me... So, I lost 3 of my best friends, in less than 4 months time. It took a lot of time for me and the family to get over it. But you have to.
The house was sold since we couldn't afford to keep it (not a good relationship with that other uncle). The new owner made the old store into a daycare for little kids. It wasn't profitable I guess, so they decided to resell it. So it was sold again, a few months ago. The new owner wanted to take it down and build a new house. He has every right to, he's the owner anyway. Coincidence or not, the new owner worked with my dad, so they know each other. A couple of weeks ago, my dad asked if he could collect the stones from the pavement around the house. My grandfather had made those himself and they were very durable -speaks for itself since they've been there for over 60 years-. The owner had no use for them and decided he could have them. So my dad and I went there and collected most of them. A few had to remain for the new owners to be able to pull up on the driveway. We were allowed to pick those up yesterday, since they're going to tear everything down this week. So that's what we did. The last week, those people had been quite busy, removing windows, breaking out doors. Nothing looked anymore as I remembered it. I decided to stroll through the house one last time yesterday. Relive some memories. Touch the pavement inside on which I played with toy soldiers and the like. Touched the wallpaper that was still the same as I remembered. I went upstairs to check the bedroom in which I slept for a lot of nights. I blew the dust from the sink in the kitchen, where my aunt would make the best fries éver. Even though it's been 6-7 years, it still hurts. A lot. I noticed that when I walked through the house. I notice it while I'm writing this.
A few items must have remained in the house after we took out the furniture and the belongings of my aunt and uncles, tucked away here and there, because we found some stuff in the rubble. My dad asked if we could take that too, and they didn't mind since one of the following days, it would go inside a dumpster.
So here are a few pics. The last items we took home from that house. Maybe they're silly, but some of 'em mean a lot to me, but especially for my father.
A gauge for the level of water in their well, as well as for their fuel tank.
Leather belt with which a cow was held in the barn, over 40 years ago, so my dad said. The cow's name was Caroline. The chain was used for one of their goats. Also, becker content. Used the 14 to cut down the belt from where it was still hanging. It had popped up when the new owners removed the false ceiling.
Copper pump that was attached to their well, for watering the plants in their backyard. I used that thing MANY times. The previous owner wanted that to use the waterwell himself, but now since it was going to be removed anyway, the new owner said we could have it.
Here are some of the stones from the pavement (if that is the correct word). You can see they're quite thick. They're quite heavy too.
We already used the previous batch to pave a piece of the backyard and our greenhouse.
And last, but not least, we took home an improvised bench from left overs from the gutter in front of that house. Uncle Fons used to sit on it every day, smoke his cigs there. Watch people drive by. Some stopped to have a chat. On summer evenings, people from their generation used to gather around that bench. Chairs were put next to it, and they talked and talked until it got dark (and beyond). I remember very well that uncle Fons used to embarrass me on purpose, when I was sitting next to him on that bench, he then used to whistle to girls my age when they drove by on their bikes, and yelling if I wasn't something for them. He used to get good laughs from that, while I was left blushing. I hated it at the time, but when I think back of it I have to smile
.
So yeah, that was that. The last remnants we took home from that house. The house will be levelled the next week or so. A house my dad grew up in. A house in which I spent most of my childhood. A house in which we shared joy, and shed tears, especially in those few dramatic months. It had stood there for 7 more years, but now, it is time to move on completely. It's the end of an era. Not the end of my memories.
I hope I wasn't too sentimental, and that you guys enjoyed the story. It's a story of mixed feelings. I'm glad I've been there a last time. I'm glad that I've been able to get to know and care so much about the people that took care of me over there. I'm glad we could bring a few things home. But I'm sad we had to. I'm sad they aren't there anymore. But now, maybe this is a chance to leave it all behind, since the visual reminder of that era -the house- will be gone soon.
