A heart-shaped urn was found in a thrift store in Hoorn. The 83-year-old Annie Vogels from Heeswijk-Dinther thinks for a moment that the urn of her beloved Piet has finally been found after a year. Unfortunately, the found urn turns out to be golden. “Piet’s is made of stainless steel,” she says, disappointed. And so she still lost her husband’s urn. “I have already lost my husband twice,” she responds. “When he died and now his urn.”
Last year, Piet’s heart-shaped urn disappeared from her closet when Annie was in bed with pneumonia for three days. “He couldn’t have gotten legs, so I think someone stole him from the closet here. The door is always open here.”
Annie loves cards and her little house is a sweet idea. For friends, but certainly also for her eight cats. “I think someone just took the urn, because it’s so shiny.”
“Apparently praying doesn’t work if someone has taken the urn.”
Together with daughter Dianne, Annie is at her wit’s end. “It drives me crazy,” she says at the kitchen table, looking at the cupboard. She points to the spot where the urn stood, in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. Besides the small bottles of jenever, because Piet liked his drink.
Next to the statuette and the bottle is a picture of Saint Anthony, with two candles in front of it. “I pray every day that I find the urn again,” says Vogels. “Normally it always ends up, but apparently that doesn’t work if someone has taken it.”
It seems for a moment that their prayers have been answered after all, when a heart-shaped urn is found in a thrift shop in Hoorn. is delivered. “I received all kinds of messages asking if that was our dad,” says daughter Dianne. She also designed her father’s urn herself, with hearts and kisses engraved in it. But the urn in Hoorn turns out not to be her father’s.
“Maybe the thief didn’t know my husband’s ashes are in there.”
Mother and daughter see it as a good reason to pick up the search one more time. They hope that the thief might regret it. “Maybe he didn’t know that my husband’s ashes are in there,” says mother Annie. “But especially for Dianne it is terrible. She is an only child and this is so dear to her.”
Have you seen ‘our dad’ anywhere? Send a message to [email protected].
