It was my father-in-law’s birthday. He turned 83. We celebrated it at café de Witte Zwaan in Berlicum. This was the first time we all got together after my father-in-law’s wife and my brother-in-law’s wife passed away in November and December.
Now there were four adult men, two adult women, seven little men, and one toddler woman left. Three boys without a mother. Two men without a woman.
No Carla, no Clarite.
Still a convincingly big club.
On the other hand: complete idiot.
On the way to the party, I kept finding myself thinking things like, “Carla must have brought art supplies for the kids.”
It takes quite a while for deaths to disappear from your routine.
To be honest, I was dreading the party during the car ride.
“We’re almost there,” my father-in-law texted. Oh well, I thought. We. I showed the app to Willem. “He rides with my brother,” he said drily.
We arrived at the cafe. Willem’s brother, his three children and my father-in-law arrived at the same time. Father-in-law on the car seat where sister-in-law was supposed to sit, everything mixed up. Don’t think about it too much.
A man with a guitar was performing in the cafe. They had reserved the garden room for us at the back. We moved away from the music and settled down. Limo, deviled eggs, nachos, non-alcoholic beers, red wine for my father-in-law. I looked outside, the land behind the café where we all took a photo together under the big oak tree last year. Children running away at the flash, mumbled jokes from the brothers, my youngest sister-in-law holding her restless toddler in a hold, my father-in-law and his wife standing proudly in the middle. Clarite, sick, but radiant, oh how beautiful that woman was.
Carla was still completely unsure of the misery that would come her way.
It rained a little. The children were running around outside. Cléo will be soaking wet in no time. Not inferior to the boys, you might say, but in reality there is no such thing as boys who are roughwomen and girls who keep their dresses clean. They all get dirty if you give them the chance.
The youngest brother, his wife and their two children arrived a little later. “Punctual again,” said Willem. There was no response. You can’t call it scanning, but we had to be careful with each other.
The youngest brother carried the gift, it was huge. My father-in-law unwrapped it. A balcony fountain, with three basins into which the water trickled down gradually. “Because Carla never allowed you to do that,” said the youngest brother. “Yes, she thought that was kitsch,” said my father-in-law. His brown eyes actually shone mischievously. “Every disadvantage has its advantage,” I blurted out. I was shocked for a moment, so many families where you absolutely cannot say something like that. So many families in which, when you lose, you have to go through endless deep conversations, wine on the table, miserable, exhausted afterwards in the car, texting your friends that ‘you have all broken through something together’.
Not so here. Fries were brought to the table for the children. A diaper was changed. For the first time in a while, we even had room for a conversation about politics. Institutions, Palestine, waves.
The names of the women missed were mentioned a lot, but casually, as if they had just walked out of the room.
I was quiet in the car back. Of course, this was the beginning. Other, sadder days would follow.
Yet. What a club. Powerful.
writes a column every week. She is the author of books, essays and plays.