HOW DO YOU CONTINUE LIVE IF YOU LOSE A CHILD? 6 FAMILIES SHARE THEIR STORIES IN ‘LIFE AFTER DEATH’

It’s every parent’s nightmare: losing a child. ‘Life next to death’ portrays parents who have lost a child due to illness, violence or suicide. For some it just happened and for others it was almost thirty years ago. They are all in a different moment of their mourning. And they mourn in their own way. How does it feel to be back on the schoolyard after the death of your child? What do you do when there is no room for your sadness at work? And: How do you ensure that you do not shortchange the other children and are also there for them when you yourself are swallowed up by the all-encompassing grief? ‘Life next to death’ is from May 14 weekly at 9:30 PM can be seen at BNNVARA on NPO 1.

The series shows how profound the grief over the loss of a child is and how parents try to deal with it in their daily lives. Everything has changed and will never be the same again. They also notice that it is difficult for people in the area to deal with the grief and that talking about a deceased child is quite a taboo. Both for family and friends as well as for colleagues and contacts with, for example, other parents on the schoolyard. Robert and Livia lost their seventeen-year-old son Pedro to complications from a congenital metabolic disease. Robert: “There are also people who prefer to avoid contact.” Anne Floor and Thomas lost their daughter Julie Emma when she was nine years old. They have lost friends, but friendships have also become closer. Anne Floor: “You just don’t want to talk about a child who is dead and that’s how it is with us. It’s just a super uncomfortable subject.” Thomas is a high school physics teacher. After Julie Emma’s death, it was impossible for him to continue doing his job well. And that was largely due to the working environment that did not know how to respond. He is now going through a reintegration process at another school through trial and error. With good and bad days.

Your own way of processing
Joël, the son of Mieke and Erik, dies on at the age of twenty-three in his room by suicide. Both are left with many questions. “What did we miss?” ‘What could we have done differently?’ And also: ‘What did we do wrong?’ Erik and Mieke each process the death of their son in a different way. Mieke was at home a lot while Erik focused on his work in the House of Representatives and now, ten years later, he is really grieving. Paul and Simone also process the death of their son Wies in their own way. Wies dies when he is 8 years old from a brain tumor. He was always very close to his brother Sten and the grief in the family only seems to be getting worse. The longer Wies is no longer physically with them, the greater the loss becomes. Simone is going to Zeeland with the children for a few days. Paul stays at home and takes space for his grief there. Simone does her best to make the best of it at the beach with her other children.

Live on
The sadness never leaves the families, but they have to get on with their lives. Pia and Woes lost their ddaughter when she was six months old from complications after premature birth. Pup was Boet’s twin sister. There’s a party on his birthday. Puppy has her own day, the family commemorates the anniversary of her death every year by doing something fun together. When Pup died, she was given a sweater with a very large donut on it with eyes and feet. The sweater says ‘Donut worry, be happy’. For the family, that felt like a nod from Pup to continue having a party together. The donut has been a symbol of Pup ever since. Rien lost his son Reinier almost thirty years ago. Reinier had moved to Tel Aviv for his final internship in physiotherapy and was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the victim of a bomb attack. Rien: “It really is like being amputated, it hurts, it bleeds. I suffered from it for years.” Rien is committed as board member at the Federation of Relatives of Victims of Violence (FNG) and helps organize meetings. Contact with fellow sufferers appears to be valuable in the grieving process.

‘Life next to death’ is a co-production of BNNVARA and TVBV.
Watch the trailer below ‘Life next to death’