Tecla Boonstra (1960): “In this photo from September 1979 my parents have been married for 25 years. They celebrated this with a holiday in Gran Canaria. The photo makes me happy at first, but the longer I look at it, the more sad it becomes.
“My parents had a good life. They grew up in the Frisian countryside, where they experienced little trouble from the war. Later they both had a nice job: my father was a train driver for the Dutch Railways, my mother a nurse. They could go on holiday, buy a car and eventually a house. They had two healthy children. First a son and three years later a daughter (me). That was called a ‘rich man’s wish’. We have also given our parents four grandchildren: two girls and two boys.
Why does this photo make me sad? My father fell dead on the first platform of CS in Amsterdam on June 10, 2000, the day the European Championships started, at the age of 70. Heart attack. When my mother had somewhat recovered from the unexpected loss of my father, she had a number of very happy years. But her last year of life was grim. She developed Alzheimer’s disease. In the end I more or less forced her to be admitted to a closed ward of a nursing home. She thought she was working there and helped her fellow residents with food. At the daycare she was a pleasant table companion, she struck up a conversation with everyone and was always up for a game. She did have a lot of comments about the interns. That practical training really had to be improved by Sister Boonstra, which made me laugh a lot. After a few months she suffered a cerebral infarction. When she also contracted pneumonia, she passed away on July 7, 2016. My mother consciously experienced her decline. Simply drop dead happy, I would have given her that too.