It is six years since Floor from Breda, only 16 years old, died of what turned out to be her very first epileptic attack. Yet she never really left. Every year on July 8, her day of death, and on her birthday her girlfriends come together with Floor’s parents. To talk, to laugh, sometimes cry, but especially to commemorate Floor. “It is special that her friends would like to come to us,” says mother Alice Cathrer.
A day before her death, Floor was with girlfriends on Hockeyloverz, a hockey tournament with a festival in Gemert. She didn’t feel so good and decided to go home. “That was actually quite crazy. That was not what she would normally do,” says girlfriend Julet Oor.
In the evening, Floor said her mother hello. “Floor was a very energetic, healthy, cheerful girl. In the evening she said: goodnight, I’m going to sleep. She never woke up again,” says her mother. The cause appears to be an epileptic attack.
The sudden death leaves deep marks with her friends. “They no longer take life for granted. They no longer take it for granted that they are still there tomorrow. Being confronted with that is something that does a lot to you,” says Alice.
Julet: “It is really a trauma. I really deleted a lot of things from my memory.” The loss of Floor has changed the view of life. “I think you often realize that you have to enjoy life, because it can be over.”
Girlfriend Loes Poutsma tells how she dealt with it: “Drinking a lot, a lot of smoking. That is not healthy. I finally searched for help. I went for a psychologist. She helped me very well with the processing. But sometimes if I miss her very much and I don’t know it for a moment, I still app.”
Now the girlfriends come together every year on the day of death and birthday of Floor with Floors parents. “In this way we all keep thinking about it. It is nice to recall memories,” says Julet.
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