It was always a party at Dad Eric’s. With fries, loud music and driving around in a convertible on hot summer days. But on June 12, 2024, that eternal party will come to an abrupt end. Eric becomes unwell behind the wheel, crashes into the back of a stationary truck and dies on the spot. His daughter Zara (24) is left behind with thousands of memories and an intense loss. “He was my superhero, my everything.”
Zara’s doorbell rings in the middle of the night. In her bathrobe, still half asleep, she walks to the front door. She thinks that her father may be unwell again because of his diabetes, and that she needs to go to hospital.
There are two police officers in the hall. Their looks are serious, their voices soft.
“He made me never feel alone.”
Her father is a tax advisor and has his own business, yet he is anything but boring. “He was an accountant, but walked around in glittery shoes and checked trousers. Not a gray mouse, but an outspoken personality. He accepted everyone: from a millionaire to someone who was having a hard time. I really got that from him.”
Eric takes his daughter to amusement parks and festivals such as LakeDance. And he drives through the streets in the summer with the top down and waves to strangers to make their day. “It was always a party with Dad,” she laughs. “Fries here, a snack there. He made sure I never felt alone.”
Eric’s diabetes hangs over his life like a dark cloud. It’s something he can’t find his way around. “He thought the diabetes should adapt to him, not the other way around.”
Sometimes things go wrong. Eric regularly gets hypos: dangerously low blood sugar. “He then had some kind of epileptic attack,” Zara outlines. “When he came to again, he acted as if nothing had happened. He just carried on.”
He lives hard, works even harder, and forgets himself. “I sometimes said: I love you, but you don’t take good care of yourself. I had to learn to let go of that caring role. I am his daughter, not his mother.”
“My father was my superhero who never rose from the dead.”
On the night of June 12, 2024, a few hours before the police officers knocked on Zara’s doorbell, things went wrong. Eric drives home after a long day at work and probably falls into a coma behind the wheel, caused by his diabetes. On the A67 near Asten he collides with a stationary truck on the exit. The blow is devastating, no one can survive it.
At her door, the officers tell Zara the heartbreaking news. “Everything in me screamed: this is not possible. I thought: until proven otherwise, he did not die.”
The blow is enormous for Zara. Suddenly she has to arrange the funeral, even though she has never lost anyone before. “I wanted to go to him, I didn’t want to live anymore,” she says. “You can’t just disappear off the face of the earth, can you?”
The weeks and months that follow are dark. With the loss of her father, her greatest source of support disappears. “He was my safe haven. I’m still learning from him.” She seeks help from a medium, later from a grief therapist. “That saved me. I met women my age who were also grieving. That gave me strength.”
Eric is only 56 when he dies. A man full of life, full of plans and always a twinkle in his eye. “I owe it to him that I now get the most out of life and chase my dreams before it’s too late,” says Zara.
“He stayed young forever.”
Not only sad music is played at the funeral. That’s what the song sounded like Slow by rapper Bizzey during Eric’s service. “He was cheerful, positive. He wanted everyone to laugh and enjoy themselves,” Zara reflects. “That’s what I wanted to convey that day.”
He was a man, and above all a father, who would rather help others than help himself. Being there for others was in his blood. “He lived full throttle, and sometimes a little too full throttle. But that’s just how he was. He stayed young forever.”
