Seventy four years ago, my maternal uncle Paul passed away in Okegem. He was 14 years old.
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See the post on his birthday : "January 25 1920".
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I never knew him, but heard a lot about him from my mother and from their youngest brother Eugeen, who was born almost two years after Paul.
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Paul's grave has long been gone, the centuries old churchyard where he, his older brother Kamiel, his parents, and so many of my ancestors were buried, has been turned into a parking lot. "Progress" has its price.
A crying shame, seen all to often in this miserable little country of ours.
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But Paul is not forgotten, although the ones who still remember him are growing old too.
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May this post be a memorial for him, and may he rest in peace.
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How fast the world changes - and not always for the worst : up to a couple of years ago the old cemetery (churchyard) of Meerbeke, where my paternal grandparents are buried, was going to disappear too. Progress you know. Now, fortunately, it may well be declared a monument.
1 comment:
It has been said that one can measure how civilized a culture is by the way its dead are treated.
We don't get very high marks there, do we ?
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