When your older sister leaves this life
there is a moment when everything stops
(NEDERLANDS) (PORTUGUÊS)
My older sister Cornelia (nicknamed Corry) van der Ven-Campfens is not my blood relative, but she is like one. I will tell you how that happened.
Patricia (my blood sister) and I met Corry when we were living in Turkey (around 1957). In Istanbul, to be more precise. And this is how it happened. When my father went to drill for oil in western Turkey, on the border with Greece, we settled in the small village of Lüleburgaz. My father was a contractor for American oil companies. As soon as oil was found – or not – we moved on to the next job site.
We were the only foreigners in this community with a wide paved main street. My mother played backgammon with the local authorities, as every village has one, and our father, the master driller, was regularly at home. Our house was new and still far from finished. There was no plumbing. But there was a wood-burning stove. Every week, a man would come with a donkey and a cart with an old oil barrel full of water. Then he would take buckets to our attic, where there was also a barrel like that. And so we had running water. Another weekly event was the wrestling competitions in the public school playground. Fat, oily men with bare chests and black leather trousers slid over each other. And once we saw how bandits or murderers were hanged there. Patricia and I still remember that.
In Istanbul, about an hour and a half away by car, the Shell men lived with their families. In style. My mother chose the villages because she wanted to be close to my father. One day, just before Easter, an unfamiliar car pulled up outside. A tall woman got out with two large chocolate Easter eggs. She had thick, wavy, short grey hair. Truus Campfens had heard that my mother, Els, was here alone and came to meet us. They got along well and Els and Truus remained close friends until Truus' death.
After a while, we also moved to Istanbul and lived on the same street as Truus. She had three children. The youngest, a boy, lived with them, and the two older girls were in a foster family in the Netherlands. They were Corry and her sister Hardy. Every year, they came to spend their summer holidays with their parents in Istanbul and later also in Ankara, when we all lived there. During all the summer holidays we played together, fooled around, learned from Corry how to eat bananas by sticking them sideways in our mouths, and when my mother made spaghetti Bolognese, we were allowed to get our white blouses dirty. Until the white turned red. Our fathers were always in the “field” and our mothers were always up for fun.
We moved back to the Netherlands in 1961, I believe. My parents wanted their daughters to have a solid education and boarding school was out of the question. A few years later, Truus came to live in Kijkduin, in The Hague, also in the Netherlands. Her husband was posted to Algeria, and Truus thought it would be better for the children if she stayed in the Netherlands. Her husband came home every three months for a few weeks. Corry was happy to finally be able to live with her own mother. And then it happened. Truus had a brain haemorrhage at the age of 36. It was a tragedy. Hardy and his younger brother, Bert, returned to the foster family they already knew, and Corry, after some wandering, came to live with us. In our small flat, everything went well. I gave my room to Corry and moved into Patricia's room. Corry was about sixteen at the time and a few years older than Patricia and me. After secondary school, she went to Algeria to live with her father, which was not very successful, and then to Paris, where she stayed for a long time. There she met her great love, Robbert van der Ven. Years later, they got married, moved to Haarlem, the Netherlands, and had children. My parents were the grandparents. And I can say that they were the best grandparents to all their grandchildren. So Corry was part of the family, just as all children are part of a family.
Later, we all lived in The Hague, except for Patricia, who was an up-and-coming photographer in Amsterdam and stood out on the local rock “n” roll scene, so we saw each other a lot. Our children grew up together in their early years. I learned a lot from Corry about classical education, which is done very differently nowadays. And about surviving with a domestic life. That was useful, because I also had a job. Corry had her hands full with her foster children, in addition to her own children.
We celebrated and shared everything together. My first wedding was at her house.
Corry, with her smoky voice, was a tomboy just like Patricia. They were always up to something, even when they were grown up. They had the most fun then. The last time I saw those two laughing their heads off together was in Italy.
We were on an opera trip with our mother, whom we had invited as a gift for her eightieth birthday. That took some doing, because our spoiled father was already in need of care with his severe emphysema and had to spend a week in a nursing home. My mother didn't like that at all, of course. After much deliberation, we managed to pull it off. At first, he called me almost every day to say that the nurses were ugly – not to look at – that the food was no good and that he was going to drive home himself on his mobility scooter. Coen immediately went to see him from Rotterdam, where his business was located, to make sure everything went smoothly. And he succeeded, together with Robbert!
It was a wonderful trip, by the way. Every evening a different opera – in a different amphitheatre in yet another city, in the open air among all the handsome, immaculately groomed, wonderfully smelling Italians who had brought delicious food with them. Even before the opera started, it was already a party. And every evening we were given little cushions to sit on. For Corry and Patricia, it was a sport to smuggle those cushions off the opera grounds. Under their blouses. Until that one time. We were travelling by bus. It was already one o'clock in the morning and we still had to drive over an hour back into the mountains, where we were staying. Finally, everyone was on the bus, except my two big sisters. My mother, happy to be sitting safely with me after that long walk, became worried. It took a while. More than half an hour later, they came trudging along, exhausted from laughing. Yes, they had been stopped by security, and they were such handsome Italians. After a lot of haggling – and you can safely leave that to those two – they didn't get a fine, but they did get a reprimand.
When Corry and Robbert celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, they came here to Marvão (Portugal) to celebrate with all their children and grandchildren. Coen and I were honoured, and it was unforgettable.
After Robbert passed away a few years ago, Corry lost her zest for life. She tried very hard to still enjoy herself. It took effort and she succeeded from time to time. Now she is back with Robbert. It is the end of a special era. For all of us.
Corry, thank you for being in my life. I learned a lot from you and Robbert, especially about the value of having family. Simply because you lived that so clearly.