The 5th of August!
Next to the fact that on this day Queen Beatrix sister was born, troughout my youth noticeable by the flags which people were hanging out to celebrate the birthday of a royal.
When we were little we allways used to say: he Mum, get up, hapy birthday, and they did it again this year .. the whole neighbourhood, city is putting out their flags to celebrate your birthday!
Yes, the 5th of August also happened to be my mothers birthday... and she was around well before Prinses Irene
(who's name means "bringing peace", which sadly she was unable to bring, it was 1939 after all, a year later The Netherlands were occupied by the Germans, or should I now say Nazi's?, World War II in full and devastating swing).
She was 17 at the time, and would have celebrated her 88th birthday today, if she would not have been recalled from life 3 years and allmost 7 months ago!
Its weird, in a way, as I wrote earlier today also on facebook, that you do not miss it when you have it, you miss it when you have lost it!
Now that might be valid for a lot of things, BUT normally a mothers love in unconditional. The kind of love only mothers seem to be able to have and can give.
Its the hugs I miss, the phonecalls, the saterday morning coffee sessions ... simply knowing she is there, a phonecall away, a short drive away... allways under reach .... and you know nothing better as that's normal... your whole life it has been that way.
And then BANG, by natural causes, a total recall from life for her.
No more phonecalls, no more coffee, no more babbling together, no more complaining (she was good in that as well)... simply no more unconditional love!
And you only realize this all when it is simply too late. What I hear from others who have become member of this natural club of late-in-life-orphans, its the same for everybody. How good you try to prepare for it, you can not.
The pain it leaves you with is one which you have to give its own space in your heart without letting it negatively cloud the rest of your life.
I try to celebrate life on the 9th of January, the day of her passing, and somewhat also on the 5th of August, the day of her birth, now 88 years ago.
Becaus of her, and my father ofcourse, I exsist and though not everything in life goes as smoothly as one hopes when one starts to think about it when one is young... with all the setbacks and good fortune which I had to go trough, due to my own doing, or by others, or simply by fate, I would not have liked to miss out on it !
Am gratefull for it all, all the pro's as well as con's life can trow at you... and only God knows how much I allready got serfed of that and also what more might be in stall for me ....
Sometimes I will be very grumpy because of it, sometimes I will be very happy... mostly it wil be in between I think.
Simply gratefull for the experiences life trows at you!
Life is something to be optimistic about, whatever stage one finds himself in, allways one is able to make something out of it!
A lesson I half started to understand in 1995-98, when my health and personal life was in an acute and deep crisis, but more fully realised in the aftermath of my mothers passing, or total recall as I sometimes also call it.
Losing that one unconditional love one has in life, a mothers love.
