The oldest resident of Brabant passed away last Friday. Anneke Weterings-Maas was 107 years old. She died in her sleep.
When she became the oldest in Brabant in September, she was still healthy. “She doesn’t hear very well anymore and she needs a magnifying glass for puzzles, but 60-year-olds also suffer from that,” her youngest daughter Marian said at the time.
She still lived independently in an apartment in Dongen, thanks to her daughters who did the daily shopping, cooked and did the laundry. Anneke made breakfast herself. According to her daughters, she ate ‘like a boat worker’, even after she was over 100.
Her health suddenly deteriorated in the last week, Marian says. Old age struck at this respectable age. “Last week we saw that she was losing strength and getting worse. On Tuesday night she couldn’t anymore. We put her to bed and she slept intermittently until Friday.”
All the children have had time to say goodbye. “At times she was bright and her eyes were open. We were able to say anything we wanted to say. My brothers had just come home and then it happened. I called them to say she died in her sleep. But it went very well. She didn’t have to fight, it was also her wish to go to sleep.”
107 is a good age, Marian says. “We would have preferred to have her with us for a while, but if it’s gone, then so be it. She will stay at home until Saturday.”
In September Omroep Brabant visited Anneke. Then she told me that she still smokes a cigarette every day:
Eleven children
She had raised her eleven children largely alone, after her husband, Jan Weterings, died of a heart attack in 1963. Anneke Weterings was then 49 years old. They were not wealthy after that, but the family lacked nothing.
A large vegetable garden and a few pigs supplemented the meager household pot. And Anneke’s positive attitude to life also kept the whole family afloat mentally.
good genes
Anneke’s mother also grew old, who died at the age of 103. Last year, Anneke told us with pleasure that her mother’s advanced age had plagued the municipality of Dongen for years.
Anneke’s parental home was in the middle of a busy road, but the municipality couldn’t do anything about it because it was promised that her parents could continue to live there until their death.
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