In the past posts I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m gonna talk some more about this now. While my mom was ill and my dad was working, I was technically being raised by my grandma and aunt (of my mom’s side). They weren’t with me every day, but they were more present than my parents were. I don’t think people really realise how important my grandma and aunt were to me. They were there for me. They asked me about my day, they did boardgames with me, they watched tv with me and they gave me proper food.
I know this may be a weird thing to mention, but it's important to me. My mom never really cooked or really prepared food. She never used fresh greens. Seriously never. She always used canned or jarred vegetables and didn’t just heat them…no she put them on the stove for ages. So the food was tasteless. We always had meat and potatoes with our vegetables…SO Dutch, I can hear you think that. I never liked the meat my mom “prepared”. It was always fatty and I really disliked the texture of it all.
We never really ate together. My brother and sister ate early or late, because of their sports practices, my mom didn’t eat at all and my dad ate late, because he was home late. Everybody ate their food at the coffee table, watching tv. When I was having dinnertime, my mom was always in the kitchen or in her bedroom. So I invented lots of ways to not eat anything. I had sandwich bags hidden under the couch, so when my mom wasn’t looking, I put most of my food in a bag and waited for the right time to throw it away later that evening. I sometimes hid food in plant pots, or hid it in my mouth and went to the toilet to flush it there.
So…I didn’t really eat dinner most of the time, but that didn’t mean I was slim. I ate a lot during the day. Unhealthy food. For a long period I ate fries from the snack bar opposite our house for lunch. I would walk home from school myself and my mom would’ve already bought it. This meant I ate fries…EVERY DAY. I also ate crisps, candy, salted nuts and drank cola or tea with 5 teaspoons of sugar. I was so unhealthy.
Back to my grandma and aunt. I always loved eating there. I’m not gonna say they never gave me fries, cause of course they did. But most of the time I got proper food there. With fresh greens. My aunt would often make Nasi Goreng or any type of stamppot (a dutch dish with mashed potatoes and vegetables). My grandma often made dishes with beetroot, sauerkraut or my favourite at the time: chicory. I also got fruit when I was at my grandma's and my aunt's.
As I’ve said before, it wasn’t just the food that made me love going to my aunt or grandma. It was everything. They just cared. I felt seen there. When I found out my dad had a gambling problem, I wanted to earn money and save it up for whenever we had moneyproblems again. Because I was too young to actually get a job, I did what I already knew how to do: I cleaned the stairs at the apartment complex my aunt lived in. All the money I earned, I kept in a jar at my aunt’s. I never explained to her why I kept it there, but it seemed that she knew. I would go there every Thursday, do the cleaning, collect the money and then had dinner and watched tv or a movie or did a boardgame. We ate at a dinner table. I always helped setting the table. My aunt was married and had two kids who are older than me. I never really had a connection with my uncle or my nephews, I still don’t. But that doesn’t matter. Cause I did have that with my aunt.
I also had a huge connection with my grandma. I had regular days to visit my grandma. For a long period it was every Wednesday and Friday, but I also went there unannounced sometimes. I was always welcome. We watched a lot of movies together, but also went outside regularly. Most of the time to do essential shopping, but that didn’t matter, I just liked spending time with my grandma.
She regularly had people visiting her. Most of the time it were neighbours or my mom or my aunt. Sometimes old friends. I think I liked that at the time. Just doing my own thing, but also following the conversations my grandma was having with everybody. It was nice.
At my grandma’s I also always ate at a dinner table. And also here I would help set it. I always helped doing the dishes afterwards. Whilst writing this now, I remember I regularly took showers at my grandma’s. The shower at home was small and had a lot of mold. The shower at my grandma was bigger and smelled nice. It smelled like soap with honey and beeswax. When I was done taking a shower, my grandma would always wrap the towel around me in a certain way. I loved that.
The emergency shelter we ended up in, wasn’t quite as close to my grandma and aunt as our house was. I had to go there by bus. When my mom recovered, she and my dad began to talk more about my grandma and aunt. I wouldn’t say they were mean, but they were saying things that made me change the way I thought about them. The distance and my changed thoughts made me go there a little less. I very much regret that now.
It was 2007 when my mom told me my aunt had cancer. She had it before and recovered from it, my mom said. I never knew that. My aunt now had melanoma. They were gonna operate on her and do radiation or chemo, I don’t even know. But it never got to that. The cancer had spread and it was already too late. They said she had around two to four weeks to live. I still cant believe this happened. She was so young and active. She had a lot of friends, she had work, she went swimming twice a week. All I could do was cry. And I felt guilty. Because all those nights I was saying in my head that my mom and dad and brother and sister and grandma had to stay alive, I never included my aunt. How could I even know this was a possibility?
My aunt had a lot of hospital appointments to drain fluids. She would be very tired so we couldn’t visit her that much. In the last weeks my aunt was alive, she was arranging everything. She was teaching my uncle how to cook, she was doing all the administrative stuff, she was organizing her funeral. It actually makes me cry thinking about that. She was so busy with all the practical stuff. At some point I went visiting her with my sister. We arrived and it was obvious my aunt wanted to be cheerful and calm. She didn’t want to make this into a sad thing. But it was. She walked towards us, hugged us and said: ‘My girls’ and started crying. We started crying too, because we knew this was gonna be the last time we saw her. I often think back on this moment and it always makes me cry.
My aunt died in the hospital. There was too much fluid and they couldn’t drain it anymore. I think she drowned in her fluid. It was evening when we got the call. It felt like everything stopped. The world stopped spinning. There was silence. A lot of silence. We were all broken. It was the first and last time I saw my dad cry. Even though they didn’t always have the best relationship with each other, my aunt was more like family to him than his actual family.
The funeral was emotional. The ceremony was crowded and the room was actually too small for the amount of people that showed up. There were four songs played, if I remember correctly. Metallica- Nothing Else Matters, Fleetwood Mac-Dreams, The Mamas and The Papas-Dream a Little Dream and a blues or jazz song that I can’t remember anymore. Unfortunately. I can listen to those songs without getting upset now, but they do still remind me of my aunt.
I still think it’s unfair. I think I haven’t processed it properly yet, because it still upsets me. I miss my aunt. But I’m glad I have a lot of good memories of her.
