Tonight Teun Dies

Teun is the young brother of my mother’s boyfriend.

It is his older brother Jeppe that makes Teun look fragile in comparison.

Jeppe, 84 years old, has only recently quit playing tennis, but continues to take my mother for their long walks during the weekends, whereas Teun is only 81 years old, and appears the less sturdy, the one with the more delicate constitution.

Teun is not an athlete. Jeppe likes to boast about how this has always been the case.

But since they both managed to survive the Japanese camps in Indonesia during the Second World War, I guess neither one of the two brothers can be called delicate. It takes a resilient, resourceful and strong person to be able to live through that.

Being adolescents when the war started, by the time it ended the two had lost both their parents, and were left with little more than this incredible strong urge to survive. They moved to the Netherlands, where an uncle took them in. There they soon went to school and college and both became doctors. They married, built their lives in different parts of the country and lost sight of each other. Only fairly recently, during the last decade have the two brothers become close again.

About five weeks ago, Teun was struck by a cerebral infarction, after which he found himself largely paralysed, with no outlook on recovery whatsoever.

Rather than wait for the inevitable further decline and bitter end, Teun decided with a clear mind that this was not how he wants his life to end. He is going to end it tonight.

He has spent the last weeks preparing for this, arranging for his funeral and saying goodbye to everyone.

Tonight his own doctor as well as a second physician are present when he ‘goes to sleep’, as Teun puts it.

It is a strange evening. Now that the dusk is near, I feel increasingly restless. It is not every night that I know someone somewhere is carrying out his last wish in such an irrevocable manner.  I will remember Teun as a remarkably strong man.