Children are playing on the field at Geldrop Castle, where the Highland Games were held on Sunday, with a fatal outcome. In the flower garden, where 65-year-old Jan was fatally struck by a metal ball, visitors enjoy the flowers and the shade of the trees. Only a bench with a few bunches of flowers and a notepad on which people can write a message in memory of Jan, remind us of the bizarre accident.
Jos, who comes to have a look at the makeshift memorial site, was there on Sunday: “I was watching the Highland Games with my wife when things went wrong. The 20-year-old Frisian who threw the metal ball, a tree of a guy six feet, slipped. When the ball flew over the hedge and then there was a scream, it quickly became dead silent, People were shocked.”
The victim remained on the spot for hours, because of the investigation.
Jan Verbruggen is coordinator of the senses garden and comes to write a personal message, in memory of the victim. “Fortunately I wasn’t there on Sunday”, he says, “but a colleague of mine was standing a few meters away from here. It touches people deeply, especially because he was a well-known person in Geldrop and also a man who often worked here in the gardens came.
“It is, it just is, there is no turning back.”
The question on many people’s minds is, how could this ever have happened? “We will never be able to answer that question,” says Jan Verbruggen. “It is, it just is, there is no turning back”.
Shouldn’t the flower garden have been closed to the public? “You know, afterwards we always have the most wisdom. And I find it very difficult to make statements about that, because it often comes down to giving a judgment and I think that is so inappropriate in this situation,” said Jan.
“When he didn’t show up to the party, people started calling him.”
Jos, who knew the victim and lived near him, says that Jan was expected at a party on Sunday evening. “When he didn’t show up, people started calling him. But of course the phone wasn’t answered anymore.”
The Highland Games at Geldrop Castle was a sort of pilot project, says Jan, so we’ll try it out once. “It was fun to do. The atmosphere was good, the enthusiasm was there and the place, given the surface area, is also quite suitable for it. But if someone very unluckily loses his balance and the object starts to sail its own course, that’s terrible for everyone”.
“I don’t think we won’t soon forget and that this memorial spot will become part of the garden,” Jan thinks. By writing something down himself, he wants to express his feelings.
“I don’t have a personal relationship with the victim, but I know what something like that can do to people. I think it’s a very sad event. I also feel calm about it, because I know what life can bring.
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