As a scientist, Judith Peters was far from spiritual, let alone floaty. But a ray of sunshine on an otherwise gray, cloudy day, sliding over her father’s grave, got her thinking in 2010. What did this mean?
At Radboud University, where she studied communication and influencing, she decided to conduct research into bereavement. Or more precisely: to the lasting bond between the deceased and the surviving relatives, also known as symbolic immortality.
De Volkskrant portrays well-known and lesser-known Dutch people who have recently died. Would you like to suggest someone? [email protected]
Peters, a promising, dedicated scientist from Nijmegen, was an outdoorsman. She loved nature, greenery, peace and freedom – probably the result of a carefree childhood on a farm in Berg en Dal, says Arjan Dresmé, her friend. The plan was to one day return to her homeland together. Buy a farm. Animals, and who knows, children.
They got to know each other in cafe De Fuik in Nijmegen. Whether he had tried to kiss her right away would always be a matter of debate. In any case, he thought she was beautiful, pure and a little mysterious. Still, it would be more than two years before they started dating – shortly after her father’s death, there was no room for new people in her life.
Diagnosis
The intention was to obtain a doctorate for symbolic immortality, but then at the age of 24 she was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 2, or NF2 for short, a condition as unpredictable as it is rare, in which 60 benign tumors grew on her nerves and in her brain.
The radiation and operations took her life. She could grow old with it, it turned out. “But NF2 took all her energy away,” Dresmé says. Yet she always kept looking at what was still within the possibilities.
Instead of obtaining her doctorate, she decided to write a master’s thesis, in which personal stories of people with a scientific background were interspersed. The stories were collected in a book, They came back one more time. The day she sent the text for her book to the printer, a second blow came: cervical cancer.
Dresmé: ‘Doctors said: the chance that you will get NF2 is very small, especially in combination with cervical cancer. To their knowledge, they had never experienced this at Radboud. That also made treatment more difficult.’
Symbolic Immortality
Judith Peters passed away on June 10, aged 31. Before the funeral, she had left a message for the speakers: ‘Don’t tell me what I have achieved, but tell me what kind of relationship you had with me.’
The farewell was at a campsite in Berg en Dal, right next to the farm where she grew up, between the hay bales. There was once talk of getting married at that location. ‘I really lost my mind a lot that week’, says Dresmé. ‘That I said to people: are you coming to the wedding too?’
Her coffin now stood where caravans normally stand. The sun shone brightly that day. You could call it symbolic immortality.
For Dresmé, Peters lives on in many ways. By the fund that was established after her death, for example, which enables follow-up research into stories about loss. But also because of her clothes that are still hanging in the closet, a lost message that still arrives on her phone, or because of walks through the city with her dog Koos.
Somehow she’s still there, he says. Exactly as she concluded in her research: death ends life, but not the relationship between people. And somehow that is also a reassuring idea.