‘Are you now mom and dad?’
Tabitha (44) 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.
The babysitter is home and I go to Ikea with a mission: to buy storage bins for Frank’s clothes. I walk around in a daze, texting my best friends and with tears in my eyes. But I am determined, now is the right time to tidy up his clothes. I couldn’t before. I wanted him – if he did come back, in any way – to feel at home. That he would know that his place was still there, in our home, in our lives. But Frank never comes back. We have to move on and this clean-up process is part of it.
I’ll get to work right away at home. After half an hour I hear children’s feet on the stairs. Willem comes in and starts playing with Frank’s belts and puts all the clothes hooks on the balcony. He’s in his own world and I keep going. I will do this job. Slowly there is space in the wardrobe and in my head. The bedroom is becoming more of me and less of us.
Teun has also come home from school and is messing around in the bedroom. “Are you mom and dad now?” asks Willem suddenly. What a wonderful question for such a young boy. “Well,” I answer, “mom is now very angry with Teun and dad would remain very calm. So no, I’m definitely not daddy. Daddy was who he was and I am who I am.”
In the evening I have my first parent’s evening at Teun’s football club. I go there in a hurry and with my head still full of sadness from the clean-up session. On the way I drive a little too fast with my cargo bike over a bump and I fly up with my buttocks. When I’m still evaporating in the football canteen, a football father laughs and asks: “Were you just that woman who flew with the cargo bike?” Still getting used to my widow/single status, all I can do is grin very sheepishly.
Everyone trickles in and we usually start with a round of introductions. Not quite landed after this day, I hear myself say: “I am Tabitha, the father, uhh mother of Teun.” My Freudian slip is actually not that bad after all. I certainly also represent Frank at the football club, because I know how proud he would have been along the line. So I’m a bit mom and dad at times. Willem’s train of thought was not so crazy after all.
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