A year of mourning: “Daddy, I’m falling”
Tabitha (43) lives with her sons Teun (7) and Willem (3) in Haarlem. Her husband was diagnosed a year ago: an untreatable brain tumor. A month later he passed away. How do you move on as a family after such a sudden loss? In these columns you get an insight into moments they experience. The first year without dad.
‘He can’t hear me, can he?’
“Fortunately your youngest is only two, he won’t get much of it,” is what many people said when Frank was ill and passed away. I was boiling inside: how come he can’t get any of it? That poor kid has to go the rest of his life without a father. Children also feel much more than we can comprehend, I soon notice. A day before Frank’s death, Willem wakes up crying from his afternoon nap. Not just crying, but wailing. I am shocked and go to him to comfort him. When I ask him what’s up, he just says, “Dad…”
A week later he insists on wearing his swimming trunks. He even wants to sleep in it. “It’s October darling,” I try to explain, but he insists. So I put a diaper on him and his swimming trunks over it, hoppatee! I’ve got too much on my mind to fuss about this. When I scroll through my photos later, I see the photos of our last holiday as a complete family in Zeeland. I see Willem in the swimming pool with his brother and his father. Tears stream down my cheeks as I realize he must have had that memory too. He wanted to be close to his daddy. And his swimsuit brought him back to the last happy moment together.
Read also: A year of mourning: “Does dad stay close?”
“Daddy, I’m falling! Papaaa!” I hear Willem calling a week later from the hallway where he plays on the stairs. I check if everything is going well and see that it is not too bad, luckily. I let him in his game. A few days later he is screaming on the stairs again. I look and he hangs from the stair gate downstairs and shouts: “Daddy, help me! Daddy!” When I ask him what’s up, he looks at me and then at a picture of Frank on the wall. “He doesn’t hear, does he?” I also look at the photo and then at Willem and say with a lump in my throat: “No darling, but I’ve come to help you for daddy.”
Small as the little man is, he tries to understand what death is. Something that is already incomprehensible for an adult. And with his playing, he makes it clear that he misses his daddy. Just as much as I do.
