Grandpa’s death

Goodbye Grandpa

My grandfather Kees en my grandmother Anna in better da

My grandfather, Cornelis (Kees) Kloosterman, died only a few weeks after his beloved wife Anna had died on 6 July 1972. Early in the morning of 1 August 1972, he took his bicycle and cycled to the railway crossing on the Oostkil, behind the old “Refaja” hospital. It was a small, single-track, unguarded railway crossing. I know the place well. It was a quiet and peaceful spot, amidst the fields and cows.

He had put on his Sunday clothes. He stopped there and placed his bicycle against a fence. He took off his jacket, folded it neatly and laid it on the fence. Then he lit a cigar and smoked for a while. When he heard the train approaching, he put out his cigar and walked in front of the train.

The Evening Before

I had spoken to him the evening before. I made coffee for him in his house, and we sat together and talked about Grandma and how deeply he missed her. I remember that evening very well. There was nothing dramatic about it, no great farewell and nothing that made me realize that this would be the last time I would ever speak to my grandfather. We simply sat together, grandfather and grandson, drinking coffee and talking about the woman with whom he had shared so much of his life.

Looking back now, more than fifty years later, that ordinary evening has become an extraordinary memory. I have often wondered what was going through his mind while we were sitting there together. Had he already made his decision? Was he saying goodbye without my knowing it? I will never know. At the time I was simply his grandson, listening to a grandfather who was grieving for the wife he had loved and lost.

Kees and Anna had married on 26 February 1913. He was only 19 years and one month old; she was 21 years and two months. Four years later they moved to Dordrecht, where they would build their life and raise their family. By the time Anna died in 1972, they had been married for almost 59 years — nearly six decades of sharing not only the good years, but also some very difficult ones. Much of their early married life had been marked by hard work and poverty. During the difficult years Kees was frequently unemployed and the family had to live on unemployment relief — “de steun,” as it was called in those days. Anna worked as a cleaner in various private homes, doing whatever she could to supplement the family income. Even with her earnings, there were years of bitter poverty. For more than ten years Kees experienced recurring periods of unemployment. The family searched for potatoes left behind in the farmers’ fields and collected pieces of coke near the gasworks to feed the old stove that provided the heat in their home.

Like many unemployed men of his generation, Kees was also put to work on labour projects in the Biesbosch. There, during those hard years, he moved many cubic metres of earth by hand. Working conditions for ordinary labourers in the 1920s and 1930s were harsh, physical work was exhausting and social security offered little protection. Life demanded resilience simply to provide food, warmth and a home for a family. And yet they endured it together. Their life was certainly not an easy one. It was a life of hard work, worries, sacrifices and making do with whatever little they had. But through all those years, the love between Kees and Anna remained. They had begun their married life when they were still very young and had grown old together. For almost 59 years, each had been a constant presence in the other’s life.

Of course, with the distance of all those years, I can try to rationalize what happened. His marriage had been long and loving, right up to the day he was widowed only a few weeks earlier. He and Anna had shared virtually an entire lifetime together. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had, for the most part, grown into loving and productive people. He could look back upon a long life, a family and a marriage that had meant everything to him. But when Anna died, after almost 59 years together, something essential in that life had disappeared. What he did might be called a “balance-sheet suicide”: a person weighing what remains of life against the pain of continuing it and, in the end, deciding in favour of death. I cannot know exactly how my grandfather made that calculation, nor can I know everything he felt during those final weeks. I only know how much he missed Anna, because he told me so himself on that last evening we spent together.

There is something about the way he prepared for his death that has always stayed with me. He put on his Sunday clothes, cycled quietly to a place he knew, carefully placed his bicycle against the fence, took off his jacket and folded it neatly, and then stood there smoking his cigar. We know these details thanks to someone who was working that morning in the allotment gardens near the railway crossing. He saw my grandfather arrive and later told my father what he had witnessed. That is how we know that Grandpa stood there quietly for some time, smoking his cigar, before finally walking towards the railway track. Those small details seem so characteristic of the man I remember: orderly, deliberate and composed. They do not answer the question why, but they have remained part of my memory of him ever since.

But suicide is forever — not only for the person who dies, but also for those who are left behind: family, children, grandchildren and friends. They have to live with the sadness and with questions for which there may never be an answer. I too have carried those questions with me throughout my life, particularly the memory that I had been sitting with him only hours before.

And there was, of course, one other person whose life touched my grandfather’s at that terrible moment: the train driver. It must have been an awful experience for him. I never knew who he was, and I do not know how that morning affected the rest of his life. But whenever I think about my grandfather’s death, my thoughts also go to that unknown man. He too became, through no choice of his own, part of what happened that morning.

The Heart Asks Why

I once read: “The heart asks, Why? But the answer is blowing in the wind.” I loved my grandfather, and I still miss him, but I respect his decision. In his own quiet way, he had helped to make this world a slightly better place than it was when he arrived here. His was a life well lived. The death certificate said that Grandpa’s death was a suicide, but in my heart I have always felt that Grandpa died of a broken heart. He was a non-believer. His death was a deeply personal choice. He had reached the limit of the pain he wished to live with, and for me he died with as much dignity as any Christian will ever know.

More Than Fifty Years Later

It is more than fifty years ago now. I loved him, and I still miss him. I have wonderful memories of him.
I was named after him. I wear his name with pride.
But he is gone.

Goodbye Grandpa

Epicurus

The Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote:

“A right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time,
but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended
that there is nothing terrible in not living.”

And on ancient tombs throughout the countries around the Mediterranean can be found an Epicurean inscription, traditionally rendered as:

“I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.”

Cees Kloosterman
25 November 2004