Marieke put her ear on her father’s chest. She felt his heart beat against hers, but she could no longer talk to him. After several brain bloods, his brain was so far damaged that the hospital could only keep him in deep sleep. While Marieke listened to her father’s beating heart, her world collapsed as an 18-year-old girl. Moments later, the sound of a long beep echoed through the hospital room: “I remember that I said: guys, the monitor is broken. But it was his last heartbeat.”
It is 28 years ago that Mariek’s father Johan van de Lindeloof died, but less than a day has passed that she is not thinking about him. “The loss is in the smallest, normal things such as a chat during dinner,” she says. Johan died in 1997 after three brain bleeding in the hospital in Breda. He was 46 years old.
When Marieke talks about her father, it feels like a journey back in time. She knows her memories with him down to the smallest details. Her most beautiful memories are at the Model Auto Club in Rucphen. “In 1978 my father founded modeling club De Baanbrekers together with a group of friends, I can still be found there every week.”
Marieke was a dad’s child and preferably never to week from his side: “I always wanted to come along. But when I was three years old my father could not let me walk around on the race track alone, so I often came with Mama later. Then I walked all morning until we finally went!” She tells them smiling.
When Marieke grew older, she cycled as often as she could go to the model racing track to look with her father at the racing cars on the circuit: “That was often laughing and roaring. But sometimes not, when something was broken again, he could be bothered and stood hums.”
Today, Marieke can still be found on the race track together with her son Luuk (17). “I am now in the pits for him, as my dad would have done for me. Luuk necessarily wanted to race under his grandfather’s last name.” Otherwise they don’t know that I am grandfather’s grandson, “he said. That touched me so.”
When Luuk is on stage after a competition, Marieke feels her father close by. “Then I think,” Oh porridge, you should have seen this. ” He would have been very proud. ”
Not only on the model racing track, Marieke was able to find it right with her father. The two also shared a joint passion on stage: “I played for years at the theater association with my father as a director. Although sometimes that was quite difficult, because he could be really strict. If I wanted to go into the city just before the performance, was it not:” What if you just break your ankle there? “
Her father was also regularly on stage. Then he stole the show at the Rucphense Kraaiemauwagen (also known as Tonpraten). With giant ears and a hat, he laughed the audience like ‘Kobus Krabbats’. “In the late 1980s I saw him standing on stage for the first time. I was very proud. If the audience started applauding, I thought as a 10-year-old girl anyway:” Hey that’s my dad! ” “
In addition to laughing and roaring, her father also had a caring side. “My father was so enormously empathetic and helpful. Everyone could ask him for help, he never said no.”
But the best thing about her father, was the inexhaustible love he had for her: “It didn’t matter what I was doing, he always gave me love: an arm around me or a hug when I needed him. If I wasn’t so comfortable in my skin, I still hear him say:” Come on girl, I will take my sons with me. “
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