CHAPTER 4

Grace and I have quite a history. Or rather histories. It sometimes feels as if I have a split personality, causing me to look at my older sister from different perspectives. I feel sad, happy and cherished. But also, how shall I put it, discourteously ignored. One thing however, is crystal clear. Grace was an extraordinary woman, always mistress of herself and circumstances. She only knew fear from hearsay.
One of my earliest memories is of a funeral parlor. I’m aged five, Grace is eight years old. It is an oppressively hot afternoon in August. My mother’s face can be seen beneath a glass top. A fly buzzes around. It sits on the oak coffin for a while, then lingers for a moment, walks along the grain and leaves the room. I can still hear the sonorous sound of the coffin’s refrigerating system, hidden beneath the wine colored curtains underneath. I shiver.
She wears a white silk dress and a brownish red lipstick. Her long jet-black hair falls to her shoulders. My father removes the glass plate. Carefully, Grace touches her forehead and kisses her. I watch. ‘Go ahead,’ she whispers. ‘Go ahead.’ I touch mummy’s face hesitantly. The coldness of her cheeks reminds me of my iron bunk bed. Then I gently stroke her hair. It has the feel of my Barbiedoll’s hair. My mother’s face looks different somehow, and she smells a bit odd too.
I have often racked my brain to find images of a healthy, happy mother, but I mostly remember her lying in a hospital bed with a pale face and a hollow expression, breathing heavily, all limbs and bones. The images that flicker through my brain resemble an 8mm black and white amateur film. I find it difficult to distinguish memory from hearsay. But I don’t think it was a depressive time in my life. Mummy was ill, and therefore she would recover. Of course she couldn’t become dead.
For two, maybe three months, we sat at her bedside, every day. She was hospitalised in the city centre of Den Helder, opposite the water tower. On our way to the hospital, I cheerfully held on to my father, who slowly rode his moped. Grace, riding her little red bicycle, courageously tried to keep up with us.
I remember we made a wreath of daisies for my mother, while sitting on the lawn in front of our house. It was a splendid afternoon. Grace taught me with the patience of a saint. We put our precious piece of jewellery in a small dark blue jewel box, and covered it with pink cotton wadding. I was the one who gave it to my mother. I ran down the long hall of the hospital in the best of spirits. My mother immediately put our wreath on her forehead. She cried. Because she was happy, she said. That puzzled me a little. Later, much later, I dreamt we gave her a wreath of white roses. She cried once more, but this time a little blood trickled down her face.
On Friday afternoon, after visiting hour, we always drove down to the beach. At low tide, Grace and I looked for a certain kind of crustaceans, which we cooked at home and ate using a pin. Flocks of sea gulls circled over our heads, screeching. My father would stand there, bolt upright, gazing towards England’s shoreline, silhouetted against the sunlit sky. He never noticed his feet had gotten wet.
In those days, mrs Schwartz, our resolute and efficient German housekeeper who had the looks of Frankenstein, often served us soup with meatballs upon our return from the hospital. On Saturdays, my father would deep-fry chips. He would tear-off pages from our television magazine and used them instead of plates. That way no-one had to do the dishes. We were allowed to stay up and watch The Generation Game, hosted by Mies Bouwman. Kill the lights please! My father sat in his chair, rolled himself a cigarette and lit it using his silver Zippo lighter.
Dealing with emotions was not his strong suit. He’d let go of himself only once, when Grace’s cat had died. She had buried it in a corner of the backyard, underneath a couple of flowering white Hydrangeas. Grace, six years old, was brokenhearted. A few weeks later, at school, she heard about Jesus’ resurrection and thought: if He can do it, so can Siepie. She started her little exhumation that same afternoon. Within minutes the garden was swarming with flies. I was too afraid to watch and the smell of it made me sick. My father, who came home later that afternoon, was furious. We knew he had been a non-comissioned officer in the Dutch East Indies, during its struggle for independence in 1948. He had never told us anything about his war past, but in his blind rage he began telling us how dangerous it had been to get rid of the corpses of soldiers, who had been left to rot in the heat for days. After this outburst, he remained silent again.
It is Wednesday. I have the afternoon off from school and see grandma and grandpa’s white Volkswagen Beetle parked in our street. I run home anxiously, quickly open our front door, rush into the livingroom. I am met by a wall of silence. My father is in the kitchen. Granny and granddad glance at me uncomfortably. Grandma’s eyes have become moist, grandpa tries to smile. The clock ticks. Grace takes me by the hand and leads me into my parent’s bedroom. I sit on the mintgreen bedspread, feeling numb. Grace gives me a sad look.
‘Mama,’ I say in a weak voice.
She nods.
At that moment the sky fell. I didn’t know the expression, but a child looses it’s innocence when it no longer believes in immortality. That night I began to ask questions, and would continue to do so for the rest of my life.



CHAPTER 26 



It was freezing outside. The streets had become icy. Grace got out of the car with great difficulty. ‘I think I’ll take the Mercedes now,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘The two-wheeled version, I mean.’ She leaned against the bonnet. The cemetary awaited us, patiently.
It was 30th December. The cancer was spreading rapidly now and held her weakened body in a stranglehold. I was glad she was sensible: given her poor health a slip and fall could cause her nasty injuries. I carefully took the wheelchair from my car, and unfolded it.
‘Have a seat, mam,’ I said helpful.
She sat down lady-like and led the way by waving her hand weakly. I slowly, carefully, crossed the slippery road. In the distance we heard firecrackers being set off.
I pushed the wheelchair through the gate of the cemetary – the crossing of the border.
Grace, in a good mood, sat in the wheelchair like she was going on a schooltrip. Wrapped up warmly, wearing a black woolen scarf and a black hat, dying of curiosity. We went to a small office to collect a map of the cemetary. Grace preferred this particular graveyard because of the wide lanes bordered by trees, and the appreciation of art. She had decided her tombstone would be something special. Perhaps a white, round marble plate, decorated with ripples, representing the passage into the afterlife. It would be typically Grace to try and outsmart death by art.
When we arrived at the office, she got out of her wheelchair. We entered. Grace had made an appointment by telephone; mr De Jong would assist us in finding a suitable grave. Two employees sat behind computers, a cup of coffee within reach. I wondered what they did all day. Billing and arranging funerals and cremations, probably. Get in touch with the next of kin, when the lease on a grave had expired. Perfectly common office jobs.
Mr De Jong was a polite man in his fiftees, without the usual proper, though distant conduct which usually characterises undertakers. His eyes were melancholic, accepting. I noticed he had red nostrils and large, fleshy hands which could put you six feet under in no time. I wondered if he dug graves too.
He welcomed us and lead us to a small, bright, pastel colored room with a varnished wooden table and some chairs. It looked like a funeral parlor.
‘How can I be of service to you?’, he asked.
‘I’d like to pick a spot,’ Grace said.
‘For a family member?’
‘No, for me.’
Grace looked at him kindly. He smiled, not at all surprised.
‘Of course, for you.’
He showed us a map of the cemetary, it looked like a labyrinth to me. Mr De Jong offered to join us, but we didn’t follow up. He explained which graves could be vacant. If we would write down the numbers, he would later check whether those graves were available indeed.
We left the office in ten minutes.
I pushed Grace onwards, onto the burial grounds. The gravel crunched underneath my feet and the tires of the wheelchair. A little further down the lane, an old woman was busy cleaning an impressive marble family grave. We could see pictures of a man and a woman on the tombstone. Husband and wife. Gypsies, by the look of it. The date of birth and the dying day of the husband were cut underneath his picture. But underneath his spous’ picture, only a birth date was visible. Grace slowly turned around.
‘Jen, did you see that woman over there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you see the woman’s picture on that tombstone?’
‘Briefly. I noticed her dying day was lacking.’
‘Yes, and I know why. She’s cleaning her own grave. Her own and her husband’s grave.’
‘Remarkable.’
Grace giggled. ‘And I thought I was being progressive, picking my own spot. I wouldn’t enjoy cleaning my own grave, though.’
We quietly read the epitaphs on the concrete and marble tombstones. Here lies. In loving memory of. The most excellent of man. All those smothered feelings.
‘Do you know what strikes me most?’ I said. ‘Everyone seems to have lost a loved one. As if never an asshole was put to rest here.’
‘You’re right. When dealing with death, people can be hypocrits. But what kind of epitaph comes to your mind?’
I thought about it for a while.
‘I put my wife beneath this stone
For her repose and for my own.’
Grace chuckled with glee. ‘What would you think of a tombstone in the shape of flames? Or this one:
Here lies an atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
We roared with laughter, but immediately felt uncomfortable. A man with a handlebar moustache, who was filling up a bucket with water, looked at us reproachfully.
‘Look!’, Grace called.
On a grave, covered with faded white shingles, we discovered a terribly ugly, white plastic vase. Someone had written Hands off! Buy one yourself on it.
‘Honesty at last’, Grace said, sighing.
‘This grave deserves to be among the winners, yes. What kind of epitaph would you want, anyway?’
‘Believe it or not, but I haven’t given it any thought yet.’
‘No bright ideas, whatsoever?’
‘Lord! God, it’s hot up here. That way people can decide for themselves whether I’m in heaven or in hell. Just joking, I’m not sure yet. How about you?’
I think a few lines from The Tempest by Sheakespeare would suit me:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on
And our little life
Is rounded with a sleep

According to our map we had reached the western part of the graveyard. We were heading for section 83, which skirted the cemetary. We went up a narrow side lane and, all of a sudden, were overtaken by children’s graves. In the midst of this section of the graveyard, we saw a tree festooned with colorful decorations. We listened to the sound of aeolian harps. They didn’t even sound complainingly. We noticed one tombstone of red marble was cut in the shape of a teddybeer. Almost all graves were decorated with (fresh) flowers, artificial butterflies, windmills, candles, gnomes, little elaphants and puppies. Taken into account that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to you, this place was unexpectedly cheerful. Cheerful, I couldn’t think of it otherwise.
Grace turned round. ‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s so cheerful.’
She nodded.
We had reached the outskirts. Lines of graves, almost touching each other, were hidden from view by breast-high hedgerows.
A grey, weather-beaten concrete grave, dating back to 1916, suffered from subsidence and leaned forwards slightly. A few spots seemed to be available. The road was nearby, and we could hear the rushing sounds of traffic.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘Too noisy. I won’t hear any of it myself, but I’d like to enable my family and friends to commemorate me in silence. It’s too much of a remote corner to me anyway.’
‘This must be strange to you.’
‘Well, it’s almost as if I’m on a camping site, trying to locate a good spot to put up my tent. So unreal! That’s why it doesn’t move me as much as I had expected. It is quite incredible after all, isn’t it? Dying at forty. I’m not dreaming, but I hope I dream that I’m not dreaming. Am I making any sense?’
I wheeled her to one of the wide lanes and we continued our search.
‘You know, each morning I wake and have to accustom myself to the idea that it is all true. I have cancer. I will die. The nightmare begins as soon as I awake. Therefore I get up quickly.’
‘But how do you make it through the day?’
‘I have my moments. If I don’t get a hold on myself, I’ll think up the most dreadful things. That I lie in bed all alone, writhing in agony, and no one there to help me. I try to break off such thoughts as quickly as possible. But it is hard to predict when my mood changes. I don’t go through the well known phases of mourning stage by stage. So, denial at first, then anger, depression and grief, and in the end acceptance. I don’t follow the sequence, but I fall into one mood, then into another. Completely at random. I can be desparate at noon and furious at night. I could smash up the furniture sometimes, because it’s so unfair. The next day I put on a brave face again.’
Denial. Anger. Grief. Did I follow that sequence? Had I already experienced acceptance? Or would my grief outlast my anger?
A girl with brown ringlets rushed down the lane. She yelled at a robin, that flew up, startled. Her mother urged her to be quiet. The woman held a red rose in her hand, wrapped in foil and decorated with purple and yellow ribbons. We turned a corner and arrived at the central part of the cemetary. A white sign read section 58. We could hardly hear any traffic.
‘The graves almost shoulder each other here,’ Grace said. ‘And they’re sheltered from wind and rain. There are many ancient graves too.’
‘Is that a problem to you?’
‘Well… would you like to be buried here?’
Of course, I could end up here too. What would be my last wishes? I’d want to get away from the usual clichés of funerals: no sober and austere funeral parlor, no watery coffee, no snivelling, no neon lighting. And everyone dressed in black and grey. I’d rather be buried at a clearing in the woods. No coffin, just a hole. My naked body in it, wrapped in white linnen.
Grace didn’t seem to expect me to respond.
She gazed at the graves contemplatively. ‘This could be the spot,’ she said. ‘I like the greenery, but I do like to check out some more.’
‘All right, your majesty, we’ll continue our search.’ She looked at me with a mischievous look in her eyes. ‘Suppose I can’t find a spot. Then I can’t die either. Would be nice, wouldn’t it?’


The sun broke and spilled it’s light onto the graves. A concrete angel looked up to the sky gratefully. We arrived at a triangular shaped vast field. A park bench awaited us on the side.
‘Let’s sit here for a while,’ I said. I put the wheelchair to the side of the bench, so I could look at my sister more easily.
‘Let’s talk about something completely different, shall we?’
‘Please do.’
‘What’s the meaning of life?’
‘Good lord!’
‘Just joking. Never mind.’
‘No, it’s all right. There is no meaning to life. And we should be glad there isn’t.’
I didn’t know that one.
‘Because?’
‘Well, suppose the meaning of life is predetermined. For example, that you always have to outdo your parents, and your father’s called Winston Churchill? Or Madonna is your mother? You needn’t bother then. No, I think we’re all free of that. You can set your own standards and you don’t even have to exceed them.’
An interesting addition to my collection of answers, indeed.
‘But don’t you have a personal view on the subject at all?’
‘Of course I have. What matters most in life? Where do you draw the lines in ethical issues? And will you act on it? I consider those questions essential, but I think everyone is entitled to their own choices. There are religions and philosophies galore to choose from.’


‘I mostly learned from philosophy, not religion. But whether you read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer or Kant, or the Bible, the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita: it’s all written by man. And people just have a shot a it. To me it’s important not to bow to one religion or one master. That is limiting yourself. Wars are a result of that.’
‘What then is your personal guideline?’
‘I try to live by the four l’s: love, live, learn and laugh.’
‘Which one is the most difficult to live by?’
‘It’s my experience things go wrong when you don’t balance them. Too much love, for example. I should have divorced Joeri much earlier. And live my own life. But, you can benefit from such an experience by learning from it. So, it’s not all bad. You continuously have to try to and find the right balance.’
‘And what if you had to give yourself the mark you think you deserve?’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Would you be satisfied?’
‘Yes, I think I would be. It sometimes feels as if I have lived two lifes, these past forty years. But I’ve made mistakes, I don’t need to tell you. I’d say a B plus. How about you?’
‘Well...’
My life consisted of two separate parts. Before that horrible day in January I could have given myself a sufficient mark: a ‘B’ or a ‘B plus’. I had exploited my talents to the best of my ability. But after that? I had been at sixes and sevens far too long. A ‘C’ perhaps. My average score would then be a ‘C plus’. Wasn’t that a bit poor? I’d rather prefer a ‘D’, which meant you had convincingly though splendidly blown it. Not such a common ‘C plus’.
‘Not satisfied,’ I said.
In the distance, a small orange colored excavator was digging a grave. A man wearing a sleeveless jacket gave instructions. We watched it both. I had always thought this kind of work was still done the old-fashioned way, by using a shovel, but that was nonsense of course. Why should it be manual labour?
There was an air of loneliness about Grace.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘My son. I hope life will treat him kindly. That positive attitude I have, that optimistic view on life… I know we’re alike. I know.’ Her voice sounded determined, but her eyes had become moist. ‘Please, let me be.’
She got out of the wheelchair and walked to the centre of the field. There she stood. Motionless. For minutes.
The third spot was located in section 62, which was a grassy plain, bordered by huge, majestic trees. The graves nearly shouldered each other. No hedgerows, but weeping willows instead. An oasis of green in a bustling city. And various graves seemed to be available. Grace got out of the wheelchair. She didn’t move at first, and inhaled the clean, fresh air. Then she paced up an down the grassy plain and took a closer look at some of the graves. It was a fascinating ritual act, as if she wanted to memorise this field for all eternity.
She stopped at one particular spot and touched the earth.
‘Over here,’ she said. ‘I want to be buried over here. The sun always shines on this grave.’ Her sunken face, which had turned blue with cold, was tucked away in her clothes.
She took two steps back.
‘David will stand here. And you. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, you know. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself!’
I embraced her. There was no consolation. She clenched her fists and hit me on the back slowly, then forcefully.