It was one of the beautiful moments in the Christmas special of All You Need is Love last week: Mieke Voogd and her family were surprised in Eersel by a visit from their son Patrick and his children. Quite a moment, because Patrick has lived in South Africa for thirty years. After years, he is now celebrating the holidays in Brabant again: “Those are special emotions. Real emotions.”
Few will have missed the images: as soon as Mieke opens the door of her home and sees Robert ten Brink standing there, she knows what time it is and she can no longer suppress her tears. Omroep Brabant joined the reunited family for coffee. “We said to each other in bed: It’s really true, isn’t it? They’re really there!”
“They say you get used to it, but some things you don’t get used to.”
The road to that special moment in Eersel was long. The family has already sent letters to Robert ten Brink’s show several times. “I kept hoping for it, but they didn’t come. Then it’s disappointing. They say you get used to it, but some things you don’t get used to.”
Sister Natasja also wanted to see her brother again. She has even had contact with the program before. This time she didn’t expect it anymore. “Coincidentally, a few days before we said: ‘Oh well, they won’t come anymore.’ But they did come.”
So it was logical that the discharge when Patrick and his children Anniek and Joshua showed up at the door was great. After a long flight and a twelve-hour bus journey through the Netherlands (first everyone else had to be dropped off and filmed) they arrived in Eersel.
Patrick heard his mother ‘screaming on the bus’, he says laughing. “The discharge was very spontaneous, my whole body started to shake. These are special emotions. Real emotions,” Mieke says about her reaction in the program. The family last saw each other five years ago.
“You never know what the future holds, but we just look ahead.”
That’s because South Africa is far away and plane tickets are expensive. “A holiday like this is only possible every now and then, this is really exceptional. You also get older. You never know what the future will bring, but we just look ahead,” says Mieke.
The family spends quite a bit of time together. Only a few days after New Year’s Eve will Patrick fly back to South Africa. But filling the time together is not that difficult. “Being together. That is the most important thing, it doesn’t matter what you do,” says Natasja, Patrick’s sister, happily.
In addition to the regular Christmas baubles, there are a few special ones hanging in Mieke’s tree. “They belong to Patrick and the grandchildren. This way I can always let them be there at Christmas.”
Now that they are really together these days, it still sometimes remains unreal. Mieke asked her husband to pinch her. “We won’t show the bruises,” she jokes. And for the rest it sometimes still feels like a dream, Natasja wanted to hold her brother the day after his arrival because she still couldn’t believe it.
Waking up from that dream also comes the realization that Patrick, Anniek and Joshua will soon be leaving again. “Saying goodbye later will be difficult again, but it is nicer to say goodbye after something like that than after a video call,” says Patrick.