My closest family

My father and mother with their three siblings in the orchard of my grandfather at Okegem around 1954, probably during a summer holiday.

This blog contains an earlier picture of my parents with me in 1941. Since then, my parents had a second son ; we lived through the war ; my maternal grandmother passed away in 1949 ; a daughter was born ; my mother had major surgery, cloistering her to bed for about 18 months ; and my paternal grandfather passed away late in 1953.
My father had his full time job in the gendarmerie plus the care for his three children. Fortunately, my little sister was taken care of by my mother's brother and his family for a considerable spell of time, and my father got some help from a neighbour at Ledeberg-Ghent where we then lived. How he would have coped without them, I don't know : even so it must have been pure calvary for him from time to time.
Compare this picture of my parents with the previous one, taken some 12 years earlier, and look at the marks of time left by a war and a lot of health problems.