‘I have to leave my husband Frank in the previous year’
Image: Little Detail Photography
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.
The Christmas holidays started a week earlier this year due to Corona. And that’s spicy. Continue to be together while all three of us walk around with a deep, open wound. We’ve already overcome quite a few bumps this month: the first Sinterklaas without, the first Christmas without… It’s a rollercoaster, but the three of us fix it anyway and I’m pretty proud of that. Now just to close this strange year. I don’t feel like New Year’s Eve. All those expectations and wishes for the new year. No, 2022 looks like one big black hole to me.
My New Year’s Eve resolutions are therefore: going to bed nice and early and certainly not a partying start “Shall we do a children’s disco at the beginning of the evening on New Year’s Eve?” one of the neighbors asks me. Of course I can’t say ‘no’ to this. My neighbors are fantastic; for example, they take turns cooking for us on Wednesdays since Frank passed away. They’re the extra hands and eyes I’ve been missing since he’s gone. In our neighborhood it really takes a village to raise a child and that’s where I am
very thankful for. This New Year’s Eve again. The disco lights and music boxes are on and there are fireworks. Willem is very afraid of the fireworks and wants to go inside. “I’ll sit with him for a while, you just drink another bubble,” a neighbor offers sweetly.
I chat a bit, and look with a smile at Teun who is swinging to the music with the neighborhood children. I really think it’s a cozy and cozy New Year’s Eve party. At ten o’clock I put the boys to bed and dive in myself. Deep, very deep under the wool. And I don’t expect it after such a nice evening, but my sadness reaches an all-time low. I feel in all my fibers that I really have to leave Frank behind in 2021. In 2021 he was still there, in 2022 he won’t be there all year. That realization and the pain it causes cuts through my soul and is almost unbearable.
At twelve o’clock all three of us are awakened by loud bangs. The boy crawl into bed with me. Teun is fascinated by the fireworks while Willem is shaking with fear. To calm them down I grab the Ipad after a while; we watch ‘Peppa pig’ until our eyes close. New Year’s Day I wake up with a terrible hangover – unfortunately not from the booze. But, hello 2022, I’m going to make something of it with my two champs. It can’t get any worse than last year, can it?
