Chapter 1. Memories
Agents at the door, a car accident, Erik dead, a dark hole into which she had fallen silently. She had been dreaming, it couldn't be true, it shouldn't be true!
She woke up sweating, sweating from the heat of this summer day at the end of August, but even more from the dream itself. And yet she was cold, she felt the chill of death.
She realised that she had indeed been dreaming, a dream that took her back to exactly one year ago, the day those policemen had actually come to the door with their message of doom. Erik was no more, it was over, her great love was gone, never again together, never, never, never again... Never again, that was the steep slide into darkness...
Silently she slipped out of bed, took her clothes to the bathroom where she freshened up and got dressed. She crept down the stairs to the kitchen, made a mug of coffee and sat down in her rocking chair with it. She stared outside, where it was already starting to get a little light. She had no idea what time it was, but she didn't care. In fact, everything passed her by at the moment. She looked, but saw nothing in depth.
She thought only of Erik, the great love of her youth. In fact, he had been that since her early childhood, the boy with whom she had a click, who understood her, who felt her. The boy who was there for her, and for whom she would give her young life! Other children had teased them, bullied them, but it had hardly touched her, because Erik was there. They were together, and together they were fine.
She had lost track of him for a few years, because he went to high school a few years earlier. She felt alone during those years. But he was also the young boy who showed her when she was fifteen, who made her feel that she was good, and especially that she was loved, that she was loved by him, that she was his everything. He had never forgotten her!
Erik, the man she had married, because she knew that she loved him with her whole heart and wanted to share her life only with him. The man who helped her through her traumas, her sadness, her pain, her fears. She had not realised before that there was so much in her that had been lost! Erik knew, from the depths of his soul, what she needed to heal emotionally. His inner voice gave him directions that sometimes seemed so contrary, but of which she could say afterwards that it was precisely those contrary things that had pulled a lot of shit loose from her wounds, so that those wounds could heal.
It took months for her to finally feel like she was discovering herself, for the first time in her life. Through Erik and her process she finally came to realise that she was an amazing woman, a woman of potential, with an enormous love and power within her, with a desire to help others in their process of inner healing. And she rediscovered what she loved so much: cooking and baking, and being with people, being there for them.
That was when Erik got plans to start a guesthouse. He had previously had all kinds of jobs, jobs that he did because he needed to earn a living, but in which he could hardly put his heart into. He loved working with his hands, building things, preferably with wood. And he especially loved people, dealing with people. He had a clear goal, for as long as she had known him: helping people on their way. Not like he had done with her, guiding her for months and months, but helping them on their way, so that they themselves could continue in their own process, in their search for who they were and for what they really wanted with their lives.
The plan that shot up from within him like a fountain, rippling over her like a river of words, consisted of that guesthouse. He knew with great certainty that if people came for a week, or two weeks, they could be helped by them together on their quest for healing and the core of their personality, of their real life.
Erik envisioned a landscape, spacious and wide, and a simple but beautiful house for the guests. A house that he wanted to finish himself, because wood was important to him. He loved nature and wood connected him to it. He could enjoy the smell of wood when he worked with it. That is why he also wanted a large work shed further up the estate, a work shed where he could work with wood. And a house had to be built where they could live, a house where they could live with their son Huib and with the children they hoped to get after him.
Erik went looking, inquiring where they could buy such a landscape. When he saw a landscape on the outskirts of a village in the province of Limburg, he felt at home. This was the place. He took her to the various places he had visited, and eventually to Limburg. And she felt the same: I want to live here! She pointed out: if we build the guesthouse here at the front, then a little to the right, just out of sight, our house and your work shed. Then we would be close to our guests in case of emergency, and yet be on our own. She saw, as if in a vision, that a few more houses would be built on the field. She did not yet know for whom, perhaps for their children. And she knew for sure that they would need a gardener! She liked to do something in the garden, but not to work in it all day. A garden, a vegetable garden by their own house, she knew immediately, that had to be there. Many groceries for the guesthouse would come from the shop, but vegetables and fruit as much as possible from their own garden.
Erik did not say much while she told what she saw in front of her. He listened and especially enjoyed her joy, the certainty with which she spoke about this very area, this very landscape to which he himself had lost his heart. Only after she asked him which of the landscapes they had seen he had a click with, he told her it was this area, where her soul had begun to dream and flow. With a smile on her face, she could still see her arms around his neck and say with conviction that they had to go and see the estate agent right away. And so they did.
It had taken some doing, because they also had to apply for building permits. At first, Erik only made some vague sketches and descriptions of what they wanted to build and do on the landscape. As soon as they got permission and the landscape was theirs, he drew what he saw in front of him. He drew a layout for the guest house, one that was practical, and also beautiful because of the great finish he had in mind. He let her have a look, asked her what she wanted.
She smiled at the memory of how much she had enjoyed his layout. She could already see herself walking around in that guesthouse. And at that very moment, she had found it hard to believe that she could actually do that. Her old insecurity had received a little tap, upset her for half an hour, after which it had never returned.
With great certainty and an enormous desire to get to work in that boarding house, she urged him to go and find someone who could help with the construction. He laughed at her words and said that it would be the other way around, that he might be able to help builders. She could still feel his arms around her when they decided together that this would be it.
She sighed deeply as her memories continued to flow. Erik had his eye on a man of his own age who had made it his business to manage the building process from start to finish and to be involved in it. That young man made sketches, applied for permits, made building plans, arranged for materials and builders and worked with them right up to completion. In their case, he could skip the sketches and the permits, which they had already arranged themselves.
After a thorough consultation with this man, Erik told her that he had found his man for the construction of the guesthouse, their house and his work shed. He said that he had sensed that Simon, this all-round builder, had something to worry about, was at odds with himself, but that he was sure he had to ask him to do the job for them. Later he spent quite a lot of hours with Simon, especially hours in the evening, in the work shed or outside on the site, hours as men among each other. Erik never told her what was going on, but that his premonition had been right and that he could help Simon through the shit. She trusted Erik completely and eventually received Simon as a friend in the house.
At that time Huib, their son, had been a young child. Huib had been a nice little fellow from the start, with bright blue eyes and wavy blond hair that he always wanted to wear up to his shoulders, a cheerful boy with a good sense of humour. She found it difficult when he went to school. She missed the young frolicking around her, because they had not had any more children after him.
With a frown on her forehead, she remembered the monthly disappointments, the hopes that were dashed after miscarriages, the abdominal pain and the operation after which it was certain that she would never have any more children. Again, it had been Erik who had helped her through her pain and sorrow. He was open about his own grief, shedding tears in her presence, but only expressed his anger and frustration where she could not hear him. He did not want to make her feel guilty, he did not want his outbursts to make her pain worse. He only told her about it later, when she had struggled through her wounds.
She smiled, because she now realised how good that period had been for her. Terribly difficult, oh yes, but so good. Together they had learned to let their pain be, to feel what they felt, to go right through the misery.
They realised that the process of inner healing during their first years, and especially their process after the operation, had been a great basis for facing other problems. Problems like Huib's aversion to school, his pain and fear of the bullying he experienced there. Problems of people who stayed as guests in their guesthouse. Sometimes unnoticed and sometimes very consciously they could help people. Erik called it their life's work to help people in their process of emotional healing. And that is also how she experienced it. She still experienced it that way.
For a short time she had let go, not consciously, but because she was no longer able to continue. After the visit of those policemen with their message of doom, things went downhill for a short time. She couldn't go on, not without Erik. Never together again... Life had no meaning, she felt. Until she saw Huib. Huib was barely grown up and bravely took over the tasks of his father. He threw himself into the administration, not knowing how it all worked. It took him weeks to discover how his father had organised it. Poor boy, such work did not suit him at all! But he did it, because his father's life's work had to go on. And because he did not want to dwell on his own pain. He couldn't, he couldn't feel that pain, he didn't want to feel that pain. And also because he couldn't look at his mother's despair. He had to prevent the guesthouse from falling apart, he had to keep it upright, otherwise his mother would have no straw to cling to.
She had seen it in his eyes, his intense sadness, his despair. He must have thought he had lost both his parents. And that's how she felt too, as if she was dying herself. From that moment on she had made up her mind. She had to go through this, for Huib. Only later she realised that she had to go through it for herself as well. Smiling now she thought of how her thoughts in that time had meandered over strange paths.
From that day on, she went home after work and took Erik's belongings in her hands to feel what it did to her. She cried, she pounded her fists into his pillow, she was silent in intense wonder for what they had had together.
She went with Erik's clothes to Huib, who now lived independently on the estate in a house that he had built together with Erik and Simon. As soon as she showed him the clothes and asked him if he would like to have some of them, because he had the same size as Erik, the dams broke for him for the first time. He cried out all his sadness of the weeks before. From that moment on his process began...
Two months after Erik's accident Huib placed an advertisement, in which he asked for someone who could help them in the housekeeping. Although the application mail he soon received was very businesslike, he immediately had a click with the young woman who had written that mail. He hired her for a one-month trial period. And so Margreet came to them. A broken-down young woman, very insecure and who, as it turned out, had fled from her parents. She wanted to build her own life and had therefore started applying for jobs. During his first meeting with Margreet, Huib felt that click again. It confused him, especially because that click was able to ignite an enormous fire in his heart for this woman.
She smiled broadly at the memory, at how her son was totally upset, while their new employee didn't seem to notice anything. She was grateful that they had grown together at such a rapid pace, that they appeared to be inseparable. Margreet had only lived in the attic of the boarding house for a short time, within two weeks she had already moved to Huib's house. "And so I got my first daughter," she whispered.
The second daughter who came in was Lisa, at that time still married to a man who sexually abused her and exploited her as a prostitute. Lisa broke free from him and found her soulmate here on the estate even sooner than Margreet. Her soulmate was Sjaak, the man who had been looking after the estate as a gardener for years. Lisa had been living with Sjaak for about nine months, in his house on the other side of the estate. Together with this young couple they went through court cases, built a shelter at the back of the estate for women who came out of similar situations as Lisa. And they lived happily with them, as they were expecting their first child at the turn of the year.
Her thoughts drifted back to the moment that the two young couples started to talk about the renovation of their two houses. Huib asked Simon if he could help them. Simon visited the youngsters, he also visited her... He came to the film evenings that Huib and Margreet organised that week, he came to the dance evening. When he danced with her, she had experienced the same fiery click she had had with Erik. He went home with her afterwards. They shared their feelings with each other, but Simon found it difficult to start a relationship with her, because of his past. He told her honestly about his visits to prostitutes and his excessive use of alcohol. He told how Erik had helped him through his emotional wounds, which were at the root of his excesses, and had then invited him to have dinner with them. Simon had felt that click with her even then, had been on fire for her, but had never let her know because he saw how very good and strong her relationship with Erik was.
At that moment she heard the stairs creak and the subject of her thoughts came down. Simon came straight up to her, embracing and kissing her. "Good morning early bird, couldn't sleep anymore?"
Annerieke looked him straight in the eye and said, "No, I woke up from a nightmare, was soaking wet with sweat, and knew I had to get out to go through the memories of that nightmare."
She kept silent, seeing that Simon nodded. "It's a year ago today huh, that your overjoyed world collapsed."
She smiled at him, "Yes, a year since I plunged into the deepest possible ravine. And now look at me, back at the top of the mountain, together with you and all the sweethearts who live here around us. We have the best life we could wish for!"
Annerieke stood up and put her arms around Simon.
"How did it feel to go through those memories?"
"Actually good, it seemed like I remembered more with my mind, with my memory how I have felt over the years, but the deep pain of last year is no longer there. It is really completely healed. All the memories, from my childhood friendship with Erik until last year, passed by. And I felt which memories were nice, and which ones were not, but there was really no pain anymore. Amazing..." she sighed. "Shall we have a cup of coffee together before I arrange breakfast at the guest house?"
Together they walked to the kitchen, enjoying the rattling sound of the coffee machine grinding coffee beans and sniffing the smell of fresh coffee. "Delicious, a good start to this new day!"
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