THE PASSING AWAY OF MY MOTHER AND THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE

In my life I have had some important experiences. This story I have told many times and now I finally have decided to write it down.

In October of 1990 my first show was planned at a renowned gallery in Amsterdam. In June of the same year I went to visit friends in Bourges with my mother. Twice I had already gone on a trip with her to Italy and now it was France. We spent a beautiful long weekend at the chateau of friends.

Returned home I continued preparing the exhibition.

Not long after the trip my mother fell ill.

The hospital was situated sort of between my studio and house, so often I dropped by to see her.

In august I had planned a trip abroad to see a Mozart opera directed by a friend.

One of the last evenings before leaving I passed by the hospital and to my surprise I saw all the other children sitting around my mothers bed. She had just told them she had cancer and that there were probably not more than two months left for her to live. I had not been invited, so I could go abroad without worries. I stayed.

She had a great doctor. One that was really involved with the family life. He must have been one of the first black doctors of Amsterdam. In the early sixties he became the doctor of my grand parents and soon my parents and the children who still lived at home followed. If I’d hear him, lying sick in bed, walking up the stairs, I already felt much better. He had 'magic powers'.

He recommended us to let her die in her own bed. We got organized and slept in turns at her house. It was very intimate. Ever since the passing away of my father our bond had become stronger. That became even more now.

The exhibition was a big success. And we could handle the situation with my mother without problems.

One of my unforgettable memories:

A couple of days after the opening I made presentation books sitting at the end of her bed. She woke up and asked me what I was doing. I explained her that I was happy to be in her presence. When I was little and woke up from feverish dreams I’d find her ironing clothes in the room. Now I could be there for her.

I cooked and we would eat in the kitchen. I’d drink a glass of wine and she would pour a drop in her water. We’d toast on many things.

People came to visit. Almost all would leave more relaxed then how they arrived. My mother was very serene. She would have desired to live longer, but had surrendered. All that had to be done was done and she had had a beautiful life with her family. Now the last big event was awaiting her.

Bit by bit she declined. No miracles happened.

I remember believing that she had fallen ill, because she always did the dishwashing in extremely hot water. The dishes would come out almost dry. She was proud of that. What the function of the thought may have been, I am still not totally sure of. Probably I looked for a course of the evil out of my reach and found it in this totally ridiculous idea.

The bond with Martha and Frans was good.

And the doctor guided us very well. He visibly suffered under it.

Time went by and my mother could hardly leave the bed anymore.

Then the notice from the hospital came to have her do some tests. This irritated the doctor much. He found it senseless to disturb her while dying. But given the idea of having to leave the house, he asked if she had expressed a wish to leave the house for any other reason. She wanted to see my show.

I still am very thankful for the doctor. I had found the desire of very little importance, but for my mother it must have been a big thing. We pushed her in a wheelchair through the gallery. The personal was very helpful. My mother was proud. It was the last time she left the house alive.

During the show she died.

Even in her last moments it was pleasant to be around her. How can I write such a phrase… the last nights Frans and I took care of her. If he’d be next to her, I’d sit in the bathroom playing cards or reading. To sleep was not possible. In the middle of the night she woke up very confused and when she saw the both of us, she asked who we were. We explained we were her sons. She had a good look at us and admitted smilingly that we looked quite alike.

Then it was over.

The show happily continued and we emptied the house. One morning I passed by the gallery for a coffee. The gallery owner was happy to see me. She thought I had heard the message on the answering machine. In half an hour an American woman would pass by to meet me. She had bought a diptych of two by three meters.

I stayed and when I saw her I was struck by lightning…

The feeling was slightly mutual. Later K. confessed me that she was convinced, I was a old and disabled homosexual on hard drugs. This might indicate what my work was about in those days…

The afternoon and night did not follow the planned course.

I had a relation and it did not survive the American incident. I began to write her, call her and then we had to meet. She was a music video producer and travelled constantly around the world. My first letter was brought to her strapped on the body of an assistant.

She had taken a big decision in life. Instead of producing, now she directed music videos. For us to see each other she organized a video in Barcelona. For Americans Barcelona is not far from Amsterdam. We met in Madrid and travelled to Barcelona. I had earned some money thanks to the good show, but K. was of a totally different class.

No need to say the trip was a dream. I left the day before the shoot. It would have distracted her too much. Shoots often last twenty hours or more and the concentration is total.

My life was a feast. I still worked as a night porter at a newspaper office. This show had been my first big success. At the end of a nightshift I’d watch MTV brainless and right at the moment when a colleague passed I saw a video of my fairy princess. Luckily halfway I was able to change subject, I already had a certain reputation…

To be sure of our selves K. gave me a trip anywhere as a birthday present. I chose the Azores, an island group in the middle of the Atlantic. I found meeting halfway a romantic idea.

The decision was made. We went to live together in New York. Thinking about it now it was total madness. I would make it there. I believed that. We lived together for more than a year. I still think very fondly of K. She had to go through quite some shit with me.

What does the passing away of my mother have to do with my relation with K… I often wander why I fell so totally blind in love with K. Most probably, apart from her being a wonderful person, I guess that the passing away of my mother made me want to start a new life. There was nobody ‘above’ me anymore and the thought ‘to go west’ was more than obvious. The show gave me the trust.

I am convinced that my mother not only showed how to live, but also how to die. This may sound bombastic, but when the minister left her not long before her dying, he was speechless. And when I told the doctor that she had died like a queen, he corrected me; she had died like an empress.

A worried psychiatrist friend took me out one night, to see if I was ok and noticed that I had gone through the mourning process in her presence.

She has helped us infinitively much in our lives. And thereafter I went to fight America as a don Quixote. Everybody has his own way to deal with big events…

(images: paintings made in New York between 1990 and 1993).

Barcelona, August 2016.