Can you imagine it? Want to love, while your partner sometimes no longer knows who you are? Harry van Drongelen knows all about it. He loses his wife more every day due to her dementia. Yet there is a bright spot. The care for ‘his girl’ not only saved her, but also his life. “Sometimes I bring cake for the staff.”
A laugh, a tear and all love. If you ask Harry about ‘his girl’, you better grab a cup of coffee immediately. “She is the love of my life,” says Harry. He likes to talk about Karin, his wife of fifty years. Recently they have been forced to live separately from each other.
Black day
“Her admission was the darkest day of my life,” Harry looks back on the day in May 2022. “I felt so much guilt. It took a while before I could give that a place.”
Harry and Karin started dating more than fifty years ago. “It was September 1973, after a NATO exercise. We had already had contact via field mail. When we first saw each other afterwards, we were both shy,” says Harry. “I started rambling and at one point she asked if I could stop.” Harry laughs loudly. “Then I had my first kiss and we started dating.”
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Forget
His Karin, whom he always calls ‘his girl’, is still his everything. Only she recognizes him less and less. “We found that the dementia worsened when people from outside started making comments. They noticed that she forgot things and repeated things. You grow with it yourself, so you notice it less.”
Karin needed more and more help at home. “She started wandering around the house at night, could no longer drive and her coordination became poor. I helped her where I could.” That meant he sometimes only slept ten hours a week. “At some point I ended up in hospital for my heart and asthma. I lost myself. It literally destroyed me.”
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Photos: WelThuis
Vivaldi was the best choice
At the insistence of his children, he sought help. “I didn’t want to let go of caring for my wife, I had promised to take care of her. I had to break that promise.” Yet her inclusion in WelThuis’s Vivaldi was the best choice he made. “In retrospect, it was the only choice I could make. It’s the darkest day of my life. But now when I see how she is being cared for, I know I did the right thing.”
Vivaldi is a residential care location Safe trip home. WelThuis offers valuable care and a warm home to people with dementia or another chronic illness. The organization is there for people for whom living at home is no longer possible. “They do such a good job there. I think they deserve much more appreciation. Sometimes I also bring cake for the staff and ask them how they are doing. You just notice that they are very committed.”
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Good care
Harry visits Vivaldi almost every day. Then during one of the music mornings he watches his wife dancing or has a chat with others close to him at the round table. “There is a lot of organizing going on.” In addition, WelThuis also pays attention to their loved ones, Harry notices. “It’s very nice, I talk to the staff regularly. About Karin but also about myself. You notice that they are working hard to be there for you.”
And another advantage: Harry hears from the staff how his wife is doing, but also that she still talks about him every day. “That also says something about me. Then I did something right. She’s just a really great girl!”
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Come work at WelThuis Vivaldi
Do you also want to do something for people like Karin? They are still looking for staff at Vivaldi. Quickly view all outstanding vacancies.