“The photo shows our parents somewhere in Northern Italy in the 1970s with the Dolomites behind them. A photo that means a lot to us as children, from a period when they were very happy and full of life. Perhaps also because we now know that neither of them were allowed to reach the age of seventy.
They knew each other from an early age, from the same neighborhood in Helmond. They went to the same primary school and later to the same state secondary school. So their lives had been running parallel long before they got married. After their marriage, they left familiar Brabant for Terneuzen, for my father’s work. The first daughter was born there: their Zeeland girl. Later they returned to Helmond, where three more daughters followed.
Their marriage was decidedly complementary. My father with his energy, plans and entrepreneurial spirit; my mother with her warmth, feeling and natural ability to turn a house into a home. Together they formed a close and self-evident unity in which we grew up.
They discovered the Dolomites as a ski area early in the 1970s. What started as their adventure became a family tradition. We still return there every year, now with our own families. We ski on the same mountains, drink coffee in familiar places and pass on what they started.
That one photo says more than just: two young people on a winter sports holiday. It is the beginning of a line that continues. From Helmond to Terneuzen, back to Brabant, and every year again to Northern Italy. Their lives were too short, but our memories of them are warm and alive.”
