My mum is dead and she has been dead for nearly 22 years. And today is her 97th birthday, or at least it would have been her 97th birthday had she not been dead. Born Neeltje Verburg on 18th August 1924 in Rotterdam, she died 74 years later in a care home in Portishead, leaving her second husband George Drury, whose birthday would also have been today had he not died a few years later. I think he’d have been 105 years old today. Happy birthday Neeltje, known as Elly, and George, not that you will know anything about it.
I cried once after Elly died and that was when I telephoned her brother and my only uncle, Koos Verburg, who lived on the outskirts of Rotterdam with his wife Annie. I had last seen Koos and Annie when I visited them at their home in 1997 and the visit was friendly enough. My partner and I were on our honeymoon, along with our three year old son, staying at the Inntel Hotel. My abiding, and somewhat terrifying, memory was when my uncle decided to drive us back to the hotel after consuming what appeared to be a not entirely lawful amount of red wine. Once he dropped us off, the next time I was to speak to him was two years later when his sister had died.
I tend to find that if you are well-prepared for something, you aren’t usually shocked. I gathered my thoughts and rang him. And he didn’t seem to care. He said something along the lines of “death means nothing in our family” which shocked me and tipped me slightly over the edge. I mumbled something about Neeltje being his sister and my mother, with tears rolling down my cheeks, and asked if he cared. He said he didn’t and I was able to quickly pull myself together. He had not seen his sister I reckon for a quarter of a century and I suppose I had assumed they kept in touch, but I doubt that now. At the end of our stone cold conversation, I replaced the receiver and we never spoke again.
Neeltje’s funeral was sad too, certainly in the numbers, or rather the lack of numbers attending, single figures. Hers was often a lonely life in Brislington where she had few friends and none she took to Portishead when she married George. As well as her brother, she had a cousin who would sometimes visit them in Portishead, but at the funeral her next door neighbours were the only people who saw her regularly. The funeral was one of the saddest days of my life, but not just because my mum was dead but because hardly anyone came to say goodbye. And that was mainly because she was incredibly insular, not unlike the hermit I have become since the Covid lockdown began and perhaps have always been.
I can’t say I miss her every single day because I don’t. That is not to say I didn’t love her, because obviously I did. But much of her life, as a poorly educated but streetwise stranger in a strange land once she was separated and then divorced from my father Anthony who emigrated to Canada, was not filled with a great deal of joy and happiness. This blog is about her, not me, but it would be amiss to ignore the elephant in the room, which is how the dysfunctionality of my childhood all but ruined my life and my life chances and the choices I made. It was not a situation Neeltje and Anthony planned – they both loved me, as decent mothers and fathers do – but decisions and situations have consequences, some of which can last a lifetime. I’m not bleating about it: it’s just the way it is.
I was offered the opportunity to see my mum after she died in the funeral parlour. George went, but I didn’t. I was a coward. I had heard these tales of how dead bodies talk and make noises and sometimes literally sit up and foolishly believed them. I now believe I should have gone because George later told me she looked beautiful, all dressed up and made up, albeit with no place to go. She looked at peace, which of course being dead she was. She wasn’t at peace for much of her life. I missed out on something there.
Some years later, George died too, ravaged by Parkinson’s and dementia. I make no apologies for saying his death was almost a blessing, a deliverance, because these illnesses take away the person you are. So, in truth, was Neeltje’s. It’s her 97th birthday today and I’ll use part of it to think about the good stuff like how she kept me fed and watered when we had next to nothing, how she allowed me to use the one portable electric heater in my bedroom when she froze in hers and how she always meant the best. There’s nothing bad about her to remember, just good and sad, in roughly equal proportions.
