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For Karel Beugelaar from Eindhoven, life was all about enjoyment. From a fish on the market, flowers for are Miekje and spend hours tinkering in his own studio. He earned a living as a painter, which allowed him to provide for his girls. But in the end it was precisely that work that made him ill. He died just before his eightieth birthday
The shortness of breath first occurs when Karel is working in the garden. “But later also when he sought out the hustle and bustle, went to eat a fish at the market or got flowers for the love of his life, my mother Miekje,” says daughter Charlot. The shortness of breath imposed more and more restrictions on him.
And open, down-to-earth and a bit stubborn as Karel was, he looked at his wife and daughters: “This will be the end of me.” Charlot asked her father what he still wanted out of life. And Karel had a simple, but valuable answer: “Enjoy.”
“It’s okay. I enjoyed it.”
And enjoy? Karel did that, as long as it was still possible. Every day he could be found in his own studio, between the wardrobes and surrounded by brushes, pencils and clay. Mini nativity scenes, homemade figurines, cartoons. Until his last breath he sat upstairs in his artist’s paradise, tinkering. “We always joked that he was his own daytime activity,” says Charlot, laughing.
He also brought his creativity into his farewell. Years before his death, Karel had already designed his own prayer card and made a small self-portrait out of wood. It was a man in painter’s clothing, wearing a cap.
This figure would be placed on his coffin. “What you do with it afterwards is up to you,” he had said. He added with a wink: “This can also be the challenge trophy, so that he can also be on the coffin for the next one to go, so he would still be there to some extent.”
Despite the difficulty in breathing, Karel continued to see the humor in life. “When a walker was needed, he initially objected. That was for old people, he said,” says Charlot. “But when the red walker became a must, Karel stickered it with a Ferrari sticker. So he made it his own thing again.”
In the winter of 2024, Karel contracts pneumonia. It is the first moment when he admits that he no longer wants to continue. He wanted to be honest and be able to set his own boundaries. However, the doctor still thinks it is too early. “Incurable, but not unbearable,” says the doctor.
In the diary that Charlot found after his death, she read that Karel found it difficult to swallow these words. But he still wanted to give everything for his wife and daughters, whom he loved dearly. They were his everything.
“The coffee flew through him at his farewell.”
After a year and a half of ‘bonus time’, as Charlot calls it, Karel thinks it’s enough. “It’s okay, I enjoyed it.” His world had become small: even walking a few meters was no longer possible without a stop.
The last few weeks have been busy at Karel and Mientje’s home. “The coffee flew through it,” Charlot remembers. Karel enjoyed the hustle and bustle, every second.
“I didn’t know I was so popular. I have done my best to give a lifetime of love and share friendship, and that I can get that back tenfold so intimately in my last moments. That is great,” he tells his daughter in their last conversation.
But Karel not only said goodbye to the people he loved, he also said goodbye to life itself. He had prepared three suitcases full of memories. “He loved Sinterklaas and being together those days. So then we can open everything.”
Karel made personal gifts and wrote letters for his grandchildren. He gave back his wedding ring to Mientje, the love of his life. “Till death do us part, Mientje. But also so that you know that it is right. We have had a wonderful life.”
“I just don’t like it so much that he’s gone.”
In the last days, Karel went out again with his daughter. Together they drove to a place full of memories: the forest of Son en Breugel, where Charlot experienced her most beautiful memory with her father.
When it snowed heavily, Karel and his children tied the sled behind the car so that they could play in the snow. “I don’t think you realized how much I have always admired you,” Charlot says to her father. “You were a great dad, and I’m so you were my dad.”
Charlot is at peace with her father’s farewell to a completed life. “We had very beautiful moments, full of love, humor and hugs. MaarhIt’s okay.” But it hurts: “I just don’t like it so much that he’s gone. A part of me went with him. We are now connected differently, and that takes some getting used to.”
