Big brother, little sister. Together from the slide in the playground, eating fries on Friday evening, being read before bedtime, the Simpsons on TV are raging. The list of dear memories of her brother should have been much longer. But Liek’s brother died when he was 25.
“Tom was my best buddy, we were two hands on one belly,” says 29-year-old Lieke Adriaansen from Zundert. “We have shifted four years and often went to step together in Café d’n Bels, with a whole group of friends. He thought that was crazy, together with his sister into the pub.”
Tom had a heart defect from birth. He underwent various operations and was in the hospital for longer periods. “We knew that Tom would probably not grow old, but it was not that we constantly thought about it,” says Lieke. “Doem thinking and self -pity, that’s not how we were put together.”
“When he was a baby, my parents were faced with the choice. Or we let him grow up like a tar greenhouse, where he always had to pay attention and look out because of his heart. Or we let him live and enjoy it as much as possible. They chose the latter.” Live on the day, “they said.”
For example, Tom wanted to play football, but he was absolutely not allowed to head because of the blood thinners he used. This made the chance of bruising or bleeding dangerously high. Lieke: “At one point he came back from the training with a colorful and blue head.” He had hit the ball quite a few times, “he said proudly. That’s how his attitude was: I probably don’t get old so I do what I want. And my parents granted him that too.”
Together with his friends, he regularly searched the edge. Because of his weak heart, beers and cigarettes were out of the question. But Tom, he just smoked and drank. “Unknowingly he knew that he would die earlier than others and he wanted to fully enjoy the time he still had,” says Lieke.
“I have bad news, I’m dying.”
Then the great bad luck followed, as his sister calls it. “Tom started to struggle with his health, got a fever and was tired. He was in the hospital for three weeks and the doctors had no idea. We all thought it had to do with his heart, but it turned out not to be. When he started to look yellow, they decided to look at his liver. And then it was really wrong.”
Tom had liver cancer. He did not panic, but held the strings in his hands. He called everyone himself to tell. “My oldest brother and I also received a phone call,” says Lieke. “He said,” I have bad news. I’m dying. ”
Because of his heart defect, no chemo or operation was possible. Lieke and her brother rushed to the hospital, where their parents were already. “There we held each other tightly and talked. Then we started doing a card game.
It went super fast afterwards, dark gray turned into black. From his diagnosis until he died, it took only seven weeks. Tom arranged a nice gift for all his loved ones. Lieke received a bracelet, carefully selected. “He had also bought one for himself, which he was wearing from that moment. In mine stood ‘of your big brother’ engraved. In his big sister’s stood in his big sister.” The bracelets are now both on her wrist, like a warm reminder.
“His axis is processed in the ink.”
Eight years ago it is that Tom died. Lieke misses him: the empty place he leaves behind is permanent and at time and she is angry about what she has lost. Drinking coffee with a friend, with her mother, a weekend to Maastricht with her boyfriend, life goes on and there is still plenty to laugh, but never as exuberant as with Tom. “It took me trouble to pick up life again,” she says. “Many tears, a lot of therapy.”
The tattoo on her arm reminds her of her brother: the familiar gathering, the endless evenings in their pub, the fun they experienced. “It is a spring containing his fingerprint,” she points out. “The spring points to my heart, but what makes the tattoo completely special is that his ashes is processed in the ink. That’s how I have Tom with me forever.”
