June 8 1914

June 8 1914 was the birthday of my mother Margaretha Felicitas Neukermans. The name Felicitas came from her godfather Felix De Vidts. I haven't yet checked where the name Margaretha might have come from - I know of  no other Margaretha in the immediate family and I haven't seen her birth or baptismal record. But that is a detail.

My mother lived to the age of eighty-six years but had more than her fair share of illness and misery. But illness and misery never got the better of her : she was a very loving person with a strong but positive character and  an unwavering faith.

My mother was the second of five children of Joannes Neukermans (Okegem 1886 - Aalst Mijlbeek 1961) en Maria Antonia De Vidts (Pamel 1885 - Okegem 1949). In her early adulthood she was a glove maker by profession.

Her older brother Kamiel, one of the founders of the KAJ (JOC) in Okegem  died when he was 23 years old : he was involved in an accident when he was in the army building a bridge over the Meuse. The consequences of that accident led to his death about a year later.

Her second youngest brother Paul died when he was fourteen years old.

My mother  married my father Petrus Joannes Timmermans (Meerbeke 1913) in Okegem on July 22 1939. In 1945 my father, a carpenter and cartwright by trade,  joined the gendarmerie and we moved to Ghent.

In 1949, while visiting us in Ghent, my maternal grandmother fell very sick : she hovered close to death but I remember she appeared much better when, after several weeks, she returned home,  to die soon afterwards at the relatively young age of 64, probably broken by grief, illness and misery.

My mother, then 35, already had  lost two brothers and now lost her mother way too soon. I vividly remember her grief, which never left her completely for the rest of her days.

Shortly afterwards my mother fell sick and was bedridden for about 18 months with very serious spine  problems, consequences of a bad fall from steep stairs years before. My father had to do his job and take care of his household and three children with very limited financial means at his disposal. I am quite sure this calvary, born with total love and utter dedication, was a factor in his early death in 1980.

Fortunately, and contrary to medical opinion, which had forecast that my mother never again would be able to do her household chores, she got better and our family finally had some very uneventful and happy years when they could enjoy  their grandchildren and some travel.

The last twenty years of my mother's life were again full of pain and sorrow - she never really fully digested the death of her husband, and renewed complications from the illness in the fifties made her bedridden for over 10 years. She passed away relatively unexpectedly in 2000, fifty-one years and one day after her own mother.

There is so much more I could write, there are so much more memories to cherish.

But I have one firm conviction : my parents were saintly and noble people in the most profound meaning of the words. And I sincerely hope that somehow, somewhere, and some day,  I shall see them again. But that is a very complicated theological question and nobody has the answer.

So, we shall have to wait and see ... but -  eternal life or not - the traces of their passage here on earth live on in their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Bedankt ma ; bedankt pa.