When Petra Hagen from Eindhoven (59) lost her husband Bram den Ouden eighteen years ago, she suddenly came to take care of her three young children. Full of conviction and with a positive attitude she continued. And while she was afraid that later in their development her children would be bothered by it that they had lost their father so early, Petra now proudly looks at her now mature offspring. “They have converted it into something beautiful. That fits exactly how their father always stood in life.”
We speak Petra on a rainy spring day. The reason is the work of her youngest child, Thijs. He has made a podcast in recent months in which he went looking for more information about his father, Bram. Thijs was five years old when his father died and therefore doesn’t really know much about him. He started digging in the past, brought out old newspaper clippings and spoke with Study Friends of Bram.
While the rain and sun alternate this day, Petra lovingly tells about her deceased husband and their three children. Because where more and more puzzle pieces fell into place for Thijs, Petra was reminded of all kinds of beautiful moments with Bram. “All kinds of memories came back that had dropped,” she says.
“That has been the most difficult moment in my life.”
Bram died in June 2007. He had the muscle disease myotubular myopathy, as a result of which his muscle strength continued to deteriorate. In recent years he could hardly walk anymore. “We were just planning to adjust our house and arrange an electric wheelchair for him, but that never happened again,” Petra looks back. He unexpectedly died of a cardiac arrest.
What followed was a fierce period. Petra first had to tell her young children of five, eight and ten years old that they no longer had a father. “That has been the most difficult moment in my entire life,” the mother looks back. “Even more difficult than let go of Bram.”
In the podcast ‘Or I miss you’ you can hear how Thijs experienced this moment as a 5-year-old boy. He also takes you into his search for who his father was:
Waiting for privacy settings …
She did the care of her three children on her own and full of dedication. In retrospect that was pretty tough, Petra now looks back. At that moment she thought it was especially important to hold herself for the children. “Because they only had me,” she explains. “I thought: it’s incredibly sad, but life just goes on.”
For example, the family went on vacation that summer and the children’s party of the youngest daughter was also ‘just’ celebrated. “Just filled in something else, but I wanted the children to have a nice childhood. My husband and I always assumed the positive and looked at what could be done. I went through that.”
She mainly mourn her husband herself in between. She often missed him at the important moments of their children. During the theater performances of son Thijs, for example. “Theater was also the passion of his father. Every time I went to a show from Thijs, one tear rolled down my cheek at the beginning. Then I missed my husband enormously. As a mother you can be so incredibly proud of your children, but you can really share that feeling with the other parent. And it wasn’t there.”
Although Petra was in a lot of sorrow for Bram’s death, she also managed to have peace with it. “After his death I felt: it’s okay. He was already so trapped in his own body and it was only getting worse. At least now the children remember him as someone in the middle of life.”
It doesn’t really matter what your mother Petra asks, in the end her answer always comes back to her three children. She talks about them full of love and pride. After their father’s death, she was afraid that it would have a negative impact on their lives. That they might take a turn to ‘the wrong path’ somewhere. But that didn’t happen. “They have experienced something very intense, but have all done something positive with it. That fits exactly how their father was in life, so he gave them nicely,” she concludes.