Is it bad etiquette to say that a funeral was a raving success?
Probably, but the 300-odd attendees to my Opa’s funeral had positive things to say about it. Well, as positive as you can be about funeral quality. It was truly a ‘de Hoog event’ though, complete with music performed by family, speeches, a highly organised procession, and a slide-show of my Opa’s life to music. I wrote and presented a Eulogy that addressed the impact his false-teeth had on me throughout my life. . . Even directly after his life:
When my family and I were leaving his deathbed at the hospital they started searching through his various bags and belongings for something. I was extremely overtired having had not much sleep, plus the jet-lag of arriving from Ottawa the day before. This is why it took me several long moments before I realized that the thing they were searching for were his teeth.
This may seem a questionable theme for a speech at a funeral, but amongst my Dutch family it was quite normal. Maybe even appropriate. I think Opa would have enjoyed it.
My Dad and I raced to Holland after the call from his youngest brother saying that their father was very ill. 10 hours after the phone-call we were in an entirely different country. That’s two weeks after I arrived in Ottawa from Vancouver, where I had been for a month. Before that, Powell River as a short lived stint as a Radio guy. My reality had suddenly shifted again.
The idea was that my dad could be at his father’s side before he passed. And he was. There was a meeting of his brothers and sisters in the hall outside of Opa’s room a day (Or was it 12 hours? Two days? I can’t remember.) after we arrived in the Netherlands. It was decided that treatment would be stopped. It had been Opa’s request, and – showing a surprising amount of fortitude – my Oma’s.
So it was that my Dutch relatives and I embraced around the bed of the only Grandfather I knew as he slipped peacefully away. Within all the turmoil of flying, lack of sleep, a traffic-jam the entire two-hour length of the way between the airport and the hospital, and generally just being in a hospital, this was an amazingly tender and genuine moment. We were all truly occupying that space. We were all truly who we were. And who we are is a very funny bunch of people.
Here’s the thing; my Uncles and Aunts – my father’s sisters and brothers, four of them by blood, all younger – are hilarious. They all have a dark and acerbic wit that would shake the foundations of North American morality. Where else can you loudly wonder if your child is retarded, to their face, in a room full of people, and no one bats an eye?
People deal with grief in their own way. We dealt with it with merciless humour. Moments after my Opa died I was overcome with an incredible exhaustion so I started to lie down on the empty hospital bed beside him. That’s when I heard my Uncle Peter say, “You’ve better not do that, we may decide to stop your treatment.”
The evening before, as we held vigil in the tiny hospital room, an orderly came in and said something to my Aunt Leoneke. A strange look crossed her face and she laughed, “Do you know what she just said to me? ‘Have a nice evening’”.
At the funeral itself all the grandchildren were obliged to take a candle, light it, and place it around the coffin. I dropped mine. The fumble was quickly dealt with and I moved on. However, when mentioning this to my Uncle Mattijs he said, “That would have saved us a lot on cremation fees.” Then, gesturing with his hands, “Woosh!”
This is the same uncle - a renowned pediatrician - who requested that if a certain undesireable showed up at the funeral my large cousin Ted and I were to take him in the back and beat him up as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt the service.
The wake was an open casket. It was a sad affair, but for me I had already said goodbye to Opa. Although, I often still find myself saying goodbye to him. It was like a trip to the wax museum with my Grandfather as the leading exhibit. I suppose it was this emotional distance that caused me to offer taking a picture of everyone gathered around his body. Like a family holiday photograph around the Rodin statue – smiling and waving.
I have my Opa to thank for my sense of humour and my music. I have him to thank for suddenly bringing me back to this place I love so much.
Nick Cave, in an interview, said that everything in Holland works. And it’s true. Everything does. The day-to-day types of things - like buying stamps, or groceries, or simply commuting when the train system is shut down - happens smoothly and efficiently. I could watch every Canadian Olympic hockey game – albeit, often alone, and at 4am. I can even watch the Stanley cup playoffs. Single lane streets are used in both directions and nobody crashes. Calls to various entities to find out about student loans, or production jobs, are met with people who want to help. Emails of enquiry are replied to swiftly and informatively. As a matter of fact, the only snag has been myself picking my way around social nuances. Oh, and the Algonquin College Registrars Office based in Ottawa (Which is not Holland's problem anymore, if you know your history). When I called to ask if they had received my faxed request for official school transcripts this is what I got:
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m not sure if the fax went thr-“
“Look, we get over 200 faxes a day, How am I supposed to know? You want me to check through them all?”
“Surely there is somebody there who takes care of these requests.”
“Yes, but I don’t know who it is.”
“So, you’re telling me the only way to know if you received my fax is if and when the schools I’m applying to receive the transcripts?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.” click, bzzzzz
There are certain things that still confuses me here. For example, the Dutch LOVE of speed-skating. When Speed-Skater Sven Kramer (Holland’s golden-boy. Picture Sidney Crosby, but lanky, and dressed like an orange ninja) got in the wrong lane on the advice of his coach at the men’s finals in Vancouver the whole country started wailing like Bedouin women seeing their men off to battle.
(This caused me to not trust my relatives when they were directing me from the passenger seat of cars I was driving. My thinking is that if Dutch people don’t know the correct lane in the Olympics there's no way they know it in real life.)
They also like field-hockey. Not only are there many field-hockey fields around the country, and a sizeable league, but when I mention hockey I have to clarify that it’s ice hockey I’m talking about. You would think, easy; you combine field hockey and speed skating and you get hockey hockey. But no, like many European countries hockey doesn’t interest them. Maybe the problem is, as my uncle said, “The puck is moving too fast.” Still, I find it strange that a country with the dexterity to parallel-park two inches from a canal edge needs to collectively train their eyeballs to move faster.
The Dutch also love raw fish. Herring, and mackerel are the two major ones, but they love tuna too. Yet - and this blows my mind - you can’t find a sushi restaurant to save your life. You can, however, frequently find a vile candy named Dropjes (pronounced "drop-yus") which every Dutch person keeps handy. It looks and tastes like a rabbit turd. Morons may argue that the whole country is on pot. I would argue they're all on
And, do you like looking at yourself when you’re taking a piss? How about a crap? The Dutch do. Well not you specifically (that’s more the sporadic practice of their occasionally conquering neighbours). I’ve been to a few bathrooms here and there in Holland. More than once a full-length mirror has been placed right behind the urinal. This is strategically awkward because if someone is beside you using their’s you’re forced to make direct eye contact with yourself or risk seeing their unlevened tulip gun. Also, in some homes I’ve found myself staring into my own bloodshot veiny face because someone has positioned a mirror exactly level with my head when I'm sitting on the toilet.
Not to delve too deep into the topic, but are women used to applying make-up when they’re taking a dump? Personally, I can barely hold a book, let alone try to apply eyeliner. I can’t fathom any other reason for the mirror being there unless you’re afraid of someone sneaking up behind you.
All men in Holland are metrosexual. This always throws me for a loop. For a people that are so, well. . . Practical, the amount of time-consuming preening and slick-clothe-wearing makes me think I’ve wandered onto an MTV video. The colours are 80s, the pants are tubular and straight, and the shoes are pointy and polished – shoes that are frequently worn indoors and sometimes to bed. Their hair, to quote Warren Zevon, was perfect. If these people were North American I would be describing your average douchebag. Sadly, from my scruffy, unshaven point of view many of the qualities are there; the propensity to wear gold and have orange skin is rampant. . . Which, come to think of it, is kind of patriotic.
The Dutch even get dressed-up to walk the boardwalk at the beach. When I met my cousin at the seaside her fiancé was dressed like a Ralph Lauren model from the Autumn Collection Catalogue. The idea was clearly not about enjoying the fresh air of a brand new spring day. The idea was to have a battle of fashion with anybody you exchanged eye-contact with. I imagined them going to home and being asked, “So how was the beach?”
“Yeah, it was great. I looked really good.”
I must say that I have not remained unaffected by this militant fashionism. After intense pressure from three fronts, all of them female, I caved and bought a pink shirt. A colour, I maintain, that should never be worn by men. Unless they’re really into canal.
You probably know about the bicycle thing in Holland. Every street has a bike lane. As a matter of fact, it’s a lot easier to get around locally on a bike than a car. Everyone is bike-riding regardless of age or physical capacity. It’s all done without a helmet while family members are teetering on the handle-bar, and a week’s supply of groceries fills the saddle bags on the back. Environmentalists admire this kind of behaviour. Anal-retentive personal safety outfits do not. The Dutch themselves admire the Chinese who manage to balance several goats and chickens – and the food to feed them, and the barn they keep them in – on a single bicycle.
The Neo-cons can screech about the liberal drug laws, prostitution, and euthanasia in the Netherlands but they can’t escape the fact that their whinings are directed at an extremely advanced society. Holland is what the West is inexorably moving towards legally, socially , and politically. They’ve put deep thought into everything, unhindered by religious dogma and close-minded ignorance. They ironed out the glitches long before Canada legalized gay-marriage and abortion.
They are so advanced, in fact, you need to time-travel to understand basic things they take for granted. You need a PhD in Engineering to operate the average shower faucet. They have a cooking contraption from Star Trek. I have no idea what to call it. Regardless, it operates both as a stove and as microwave. It will bake a cake, and it will defrost your chicken. This technological marvel has two dials, three buttons, and not a single actual word. It’s so futuristic that I spent 20 minutes squinting at the meaningless symbols on its dashboard like they were Egyptian hieroglyphics – trying to discern their functionality. This was to defrost bread.
* * *
So now I’d like to introduce you to my cousin Liselotte (pronounced “lee-ZA-lawt). The reason she get’s kind of a starring role in this blog is to illustrate that teenage girls are the same the world over. Also, because she’s probably the person (I use “person” in the loosest meaning of the word) I’ve spent the most time with while I’ve been staying at my Uncle’s.
Liselotte is 15. She’s tall, skinny, and gawky (only a few inches shorter than me). She doesn’t have full control of her limbs. Often they betray her – her feet ignoring some steps, her hands refusing to grip objects. She is very, very, cute with stylish glasses and the obligatory braces that cause her to have to slurp saliva every time she laughs.
She seems to have more bones than the average person. They are sharp bones, and they are located in places like her elbows, shins, and feet. I’m learning this the hard way. In one sense I’m happy that she feels comfortable in physically abusing me, on the other hand my pain threshold is only so high, and she has no concept of her lanky strength.
It used to be she would just pile verbal abuse on me – picking words from her surprisingly extensive English vocabulary like: “stupid”, “wimp”, “idiot”, “dumb”, "loser" and the classic, and most often used, “weirdo”. Other times she threatens my life: “I will KILL you, you know it?”, “You are dead, man.”, “You better watch out, I will beat you to DEATH.” Sometimes these comments are made in passing, like she’s asking me the time, other times she’s nose-to-nose with me, eyeballs bulging.
Lately I’ve come to dread hearing, “What are you doing weirdo?” even though it’s plain I’m either looking for work, surfing the web, or cooking. Usually this question is followed by a flurry of punches, kicks, and growling. I have to defend myself with any available nearby object, or keep her at bay by snapping a twisted dish-rag.
I may have set the tone for this behaviour because I often find myself in hysterics laughing at her. Whether it be the instant and shocking turnaround in mood, her adorable Dutch accent, or the fact that she’s plain awkward, I find her endlessly amusing.
I once was sitting having breakfast when she started coming down the stairs from her bedroom. She was bleary-eyed and morning-grumpy with hair pointed in every direction. I started humming the Imperial March theme from Star Wars. She snarled at me, poured herself a large bowl of chocolate pudding (called vla, which to me sounds like only part of a word), covered that in chocolate sprinkles, and filled a mug with chocolate milk. She had created the most hilarious breakfast I have ever seen. There is probably a genealogical impetus behind this breakfast as the Dutch love sweet stuff (Yet there’s low incidents of diabetes, and obesity is very rare. Hmmm.)
In a flash she can go from dancing in circles in the kitchen to snarling like a rabid animal (probably from the frequent sugar-rushes and subsequent withdrawls). Most things don’t matter, and everything else is boring. She loves Justin Bieber and other ready-made plastic constructs. She like horses, sleep-overs, and instant-messaging with her friends. But hates vegetables. The house becomes incredibly quiet when she leaves it.
In short, your average nuanced teenager.
Here’s the thing though. She took one look at Fox News and was able to identify that, “These are stupid people.” She speaks English better than most people her age in North America. She is involved in fundraising, sports, and trying to learn the piano and German. She’s already studying theology and has discarded the dumb ones. She rarely watches television and takes constant trips to the library. It’s not that she’s extraordinarily driven, it’s just the way society is set up here.
One example is the lack of collegiate or academic sports, which means that kids her age find themselves doing other things to broaden their experience. It also means they won’t be excluded from sports because they’re not good enough. Sports are available outside of the school system, and anyone and everyone can play. If you suck, there is a league for you. The added self-confidence this lends you is free of charge.
Anyway, Liselotte is your average Dutch teen. Well not average, she’s my cousin so she’s awesome.
She’s part of the reason the Netherlands is where it is. She’s part of the reason I love this place so much.
Her, and Opa.
Danke Opa.
