family

today is my mother's 80th birthday
we celebrated last evening with a big party in my parents' hometown Maastricht
lots of people came and we had a truly good time, laughter and tears and everything in between
we stayed the night and enjoyed an-after-party breakfast.....

in the photo she is standing with her twin brother at the age of 6
she is the extrovert, he the introvert

he died 17 years ago at the age of 63, he was my favourite uncle, crazy, funny, playful we, his nieces and nephews loved him dearly, as did many others. It was another story for his siblings and parents as he suffered from hypochondria in his younger years, which became much more serious and eventually evolved into schizophrenia, making life for himself and his closest family difficult. The last years of his life were, luckily for him and all of us much, much better; he died on the dance floor with a smile on his face