The first very bleak day in my still very young life, my first great loss.
My beloved grandmother Maria Antonia De Vidts passed away in her house on the Rattenberg (Leopoldstraat) in Okegem in the presence of her husband and their three surviving children. After a life full of toil, misery and sickness, she had a painful agony.
I still hear my mother recounting her mother's last moments - these clearly have been among the most, if not the most painful moments in her life. Up to her own death, fifty one years and a day later, she kept talking with great love of her mother and her father.
My grandmother had been born in the Koestraat in Pamel on January 31 1885 and was the oldest surviving child of Felix De Vidts (Pamel 1853 -1940) and Blondina Muylaert (Denderhoutem 1849 - Pamel 1942). She married Joannes Franciscus Neukermans (Okegem 1886 - 1961), a carpenter with the Belgian railroad, and they had five children, three of whom survived. I have written about this in "Mothers".
In her youth, my grandmother was a maid in various locations (including in Haaltert and in Okegem - it is probable that she met my grandfather that way) and later made leather gloves at home - before the second world war a lot of women in Okegem did that, including my mother, her daughter.
My grandfather and grandmother lived in three places at least (near the railroad station, close to the windmill in the Kattestraat) and finally on the Rattenberg. I only knew the last address, the location of many an enchanting day in my young life.
My beloved grandmother Maria Antonia De Vidts passed away in her house on the Rattenberg (Leopoldstraat) in Okegem in the presence of her husband and their three surviving children. After a life full of toil, misery and sickness, she had a painful agony.
I still hear my mother recounting her mother's last moments - these clearly have been among the most, if not the most painful moments in her life. Up to her own death, fifty one years and a day later, she kept talking with great love of her mother and her father.
My grandmother had been born in the Koestraat in Pamel on January 31 1885 and was the oldest surviving child of Felix De Vidts (Pamel 1853 -1940) and Blondina Muylaert (Denderhoutem 1849 - Pamel 1942). She married Joannes Franciscus Neukermans (Okegem 1886 - 1961), a carpenter with the Belgian railroad, and they had five children, three of whom survived. I have written about this in "Mothers".
In her youth, my grandmother was a maid in various locations (including in Haaltert and in Okegem - it is probable that she met my grandfather that way) and later made leather gloves at home - before the second world war a lot of women in Okegem did that, including my mother, her daughter.
My grandfather and grandmother lived in three places at least (near the railroad station, close to the windmill in the Kattestraat) and finally on the Rattenberg. I only knew the last address, the location of many an enchanting day in my young life.
...
The photo represents my maternal grandparents with their three eldest grandchildren in their garden maybe during the Easter holiday of 1949, half a year before my grandmother's death, but I'm not sure about the date - it may have been earlier ...
2 comments:
Mooie foto!Wie was de fotograaf van dienst in die jaren op de Rattenberg of had peter Sis toen zelf al "ne kodak"?
Ik weet het niet Guy, maar ik denk dat je vader de fotograaf was.
Post a Comment