Christiaan Hovestadt
It seems odd to be writing those words. I have been very blessed with not only knowing my grandparents but most of my great-grandparents. Only a few years ago my great grandmother died.
But this is opa.
It's just one of those sad/happy/holding back the tears kind of days.
Sad that, though I planned to visit him this afternoon, I didn't get to see him one more time. He didn't know who I was anymore, but just to put my hand in his big hands and tell him I love him and see him smile.
Happy because the last few weeks and months he has been in some pain and very confused. What a wonderful thing to be able to grieve with hope - knowing that he is no longer confused or sad or tired or restless or sick. Now he is in his Father's arms.
Holding back tears because oma didn't get to see him this last week. He was in isolation at the hospital because he had some sort of an infection and she had a cold so she wasn't allowed to see him. It breaks my heart to think of him laying there confused without oma there to tell him it is ok or hold his hand and that she didn't get to sit with him. Even though he may not have always recognized her, and he was a difficult man (in her words) at times, there is still something about spending those last earthly minutes together.
All day I've been thinking about opa and the things that he did for us grandkids.
The highlight of our visits was dessert. Oma usually had made custard (the hard yellow kind) or yogurt and when oma would turn around, opa would reach up to the shelf above the table and pull down the containers with the chocolate hail or fruit hail and quickly sprinkle it in our dessert. He'd mix in the jam (if we wanted oma jam instead) so that it was perfectly blended.
If we did have a family get together, he was always the last one to get food on his plate - mostly because he would clean out every bowl. There was rarely ever leftovers!
Music was always playing. He wired the music through the upstairs and the downstairs so that even when we were downstairs playing we could hear the music. There were so many 'good' songs I learned from those days. The Singing Nuns singing The Banquet or I Saw Raindrops on My Window. We had a sermon not that long ago about the parable of the banquet and the first thing that popped into my head was "I cannot come, I cannot come to the banquet, don't bother me now I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow, I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum, pray hold me excused I cannot come".
People laugh at my sisters and I (and I'm sure my cousins too) when we talk about 'the scary closet'. Our's is the cold cellar in the laundry room and under the stairs in the basement (I try not to think about the fact that I sleep with 2 scary closets!!!). At oma and opa's house it was downstairs, next to the playroom. It wasn't really a scary closet - just a storage space with boxes, toys and games. But one time opa decided to scare us and he put a bear's head on top of the box. You can't imagine the shrieks of the girls running upstairs crying that there was a bear in the closet and opa laughing! He may have regretted that one because we never wanted to go into the closet - even if he assured us that he had moved the head.
Opa always ended every meal saying The Lord's Prayer in dutch. We didn't understand but when he said 'clave and clave' we knew he was almost done. (though I just tried to google translate that and it didn't come out the same... something about my grandparents being from Zeeland and speaking a weird dialect I'm sure).
There were some things that I didn't know about opa and oma till I was an adult. They lived closed to Kingston (where all the Ontario Federal Prisons are located) and in 1974 (just before I was born) they had a man who lived with them during the week. On Friday after he was done work they would take him to Warkworth Institution to serve his time and during the week he lived with them and worked. I didn't learn about this till I started to work at RPM. It was very neat to learn that as a new born I was already 'exposed' the missions of my grandparents and opening their home. They also used to go into the prisons to do visits.
Talking with the kids this morning, we explained that it wasn't their opa but opa's daddy - the one who gives us the yellow candy (Advocat candies). And from the mouth of babes "Did he love God? Then he's in heaven and we don't have to be sad".
Opa is home.
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Betty