self-picked flowers
announcement of passing away in AD Utrechts Nieuwsblad
post on Facebook
| self-picked flowers
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announcement of passing away in AD Utrechts Nieuwsblad post on Facebook |
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Dear friends, Below is an overview of Leonoor's difficult, lived through, felt through and sometimes foretold, shaped in her own way, courageous, creative, musical, extraordinary life from alone to together. As the fourth chiild of five children in 4 years, Leonoor was born in 1959, she has an elder sister, two elder brothers and a 4-year younger sister. She moved more than once, in Bergambacht from one house to another as a one-month-old baby. Her mother remembered Leonoor crying all day then. Because of her father's work and career, they moved again to Schiedam at the beginning of primary school and to Bunnik at the end of primary school. She felt less intelligent than her elder sister and brothers, often cried in silence, especially on Sundays after they went to church with the family, her mother then rested in the afternoon. Her father, elder sister and brothers argued with each other, as they did every day at the table at dinner. At secondary school in Zeist, in addition to gymnasium, violin lessons, catechism and church confession, Leonoor did two or three years of preliminary conservatoire education on Saturdays. After a year of violin studies in Utrecht, she failed the transitional exam. Thanks to her mother, her parents spoke to the director. So Leonoor got a second chance during the summer holidays. She was still able to continue in the second year and through a new violin teacher went to the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. She continued to live in Utrecht on Biltstraat in a house with other conservatory students. Leonoor studied very hard every day, and felt many times that others seemed more talented than her. From the age of 18, she had been giving violin lessons to children, students, adults. After her six-year study, she worked for seven years as a violin teacher at the music school in Tiel and also gave private lessons at home. She had a terrible relationship with a friend, with whom she had bought a house in Lombok together. Her friend started an affair with a Syrian man and had two children with him after she left Leonoor. Her friend died of a brain tumor, leaving behind her children aged 1 and 2. Leonoor has been alone for 16 years, finding every day terrible. During that time, she lost many contacts due to misunderstanding from female friends, friends and family. She was very lonely. As she often said "no Christmas and New Year's Eve for 8 years". She was searching for alternative help, she did everything to get out of the deep valley she was in. Successively, she had haptotherapy counselling from three different men. Each of them treated her badly, on the advice of the last therapist, she had no contact with her mother for four years. He sent Leonoor to naturopathy training and stopped her from studying haptonomy. During that lonely time, in 2000, she went through an consciousness process, which she wrote down and developed. Against everything, Leonoor connected and built up contact with her mother in a whole new way. She went to help her elder sister who did not want to see her for 12 years and was at home burnt out for the fifth time. She found the strength and had the courage to start a practice for haptonomy and music herself, first in the centre of Utrecht, after renovating a room upstairs at her home. I found a flyer from Leonoor at the library, met her in 2003, we went camping for a two week period during a rainy summer in Drenthe in 2006, with her elder sister and someone of my age, Erik. She took big steps back to where Erik and I were, we were totally stranded in our lives. She, like us, also bought a guitar. What a sacrifice - one of many - I see it in retrospect, after her music education and experience as a violin teacher. She taught us to read notes, play by heart, listen to each other and what purity is in music, but first and above all, she taught us purity in contact. After our holiday in Drenthe in August 2006, Leonoor said we could come and live with her, an unimaginable gesture. Each of us lived separately. Leonoor tried to bring us together, all three of us having great difficulty with each other. We were allowed to share in everything she had prepared to treat each other well and start (learning) to work together. Leonoor sold her violin, she bought violas da gamba and lutes with us and also asked for these Renaissance instruments to be built, we made bamboo flutes ourselves. For two years we had private lessons from her every day, after that we played 4-part music on the instruments and sang a cappella. We made music for and with babies, children, elderly people in and around Utrecht. Her youngest brother suffered a cardiac arrest in 2016, he reached the age of 58. Her older sister passed away in 2017 in our presence, at home, while Leonoor held her hands. That same evening, we were taken away by the police, suspected of death through negligence. Overnight, we were transferred to a police cell in Houten. There we were detained separately, interrogated and released two days later. All this time Leonoor was thinking of her mother, who would have no idea why we suddenly stopped visiting her every day at the care home in The Hague. As soon as we were home, one day recovered from all the tensions, we went to see her mother again. A lot of negative publicity followed, journalists were at the door, the phone rang constantly, we appeared - like criminals with bars in front of our eyes - on TV, were in every newspaper, national and international. My parents were on holiday in France at the time, my brother in Japan, they were shocked to hear the sad news of the death of Jeannette. Unfortunately, they - and many other people - believed the untrue stories written and claimed about us everywhere. Photos of the four of us went and still go around on Facebook and other social media after years. People, sometimes total strangers of ours, harassed us, spoke and thought negatively about us. Students and journalists from newspaper and television, who were looking for sensation, approached us many times for an interview, to which we did not respond. In 2019, Janneke, the mother of Leonoor, died in the closed ward of a care home, all alone. At the same time as caring intensively for her mother who was wrongfully declared demented, travelling daily from Utrecht to The Hague, Leonoor even spent two years on Facebook 3 or 4 times a week constantly sharing and picturing how her mother was left in the care home, having to take 100 pills a week, an agony until her death. She would have preferred to take her mother into her home, but had her father, her eldest brother and youngest sister against her, and unfortunately the care home too. Just before the passing away of Janneke, Erik left and Leonoor and I were more reliant on each other, but could also finally get to ourselves. For almost a year, 1000 guests stayed at our home in three upstairs bedrooms, we had started a bed and breakfast, bookings went through AirBnB. In autumn, it got 13 degrees in the house because of problems with the air-heat pump, incorrectly installed a few years before, by a company that had gone bankrupt. Two men who did repairs did not finish the agreed work that followed, but kept sending bills. We (almost) couldn't sleep anymore when they were passing by. Leonoor (and I) went through a lot and got a lot of opposition thrown at us. A terrible novel full of lies about us was also published in 2020. School students were on our doorstep, reading the book for the Dutch language. They reacted astonished when it turned out that it was NOT our story, but made up by the female author, who did not know us, did not want to meet us and claimed to have remained close to reality. We got reconnected with Erik in late 2021, we briefly met three times. The months of daily phone conversations with him became too much for us at one point. In May 2022, we participated in a lottery for housing land, we were out of the draw and were unexpectedly called that we could still choose from three plots in the south of the Netherlands. Leonoor designed a round house of straw and clay, which she had been preparing for years, we had it worked out by a builder/architect we already knew. From the beginning of this year, we have cleared out a lot of belongings, made our house in Utrecht ready for sale, did everything we could to get the necessary financing for the new house. We could hardly bear it anymore. Very sad that Leonoor passed away, even before the transfer of the house will take place, the moving to a temporary home, until the construction of the new house will be finished in early 2024. She didn't know if she would make it, as her health kept deteriorating, despite my reassurances that she was going to be fine. Dear Leonoor, I can trust that you are still there, in a different way, we see red admirals and other butterflies every day, since you passed away it is suddenly warm summer weather in early September. But I miss you too, cry when I see the video I recorded, hear you singing "Angelic Watch" again for your mother in the nursing home, before bedtime. I feel I sometimes fell short towards you, got irritated when it was all too much for me. You often said you felt alone, which I felt bad about, because you couldn't express everything, even to me, although we were together and could share everything. I also said I don't want to hurt you, I don't know any other person I trust, except you and your mother, whom I got to know through you and who I saw become a dear mother through all your efforts. At the end, you didn't want to live anymore, not in this way with so much pain, you cried every day, you couldn't walk, you couldn't sit, lying down was only possible in one position, you couldn't go to the toilet without help from me. You said you didn't want to be alone, very vulnerable and human, but almost nobody dares to say that. You wanted to call Erik, because you would feel too bad that you had invested so much and it would have led to nothing. We had experienced so much together, unbearable if all that were to be lost. I said "no" at first and came back to it, as it happened more often. Erik arrived with us and immediately stayed, it felt different from when he left four years earlier. A few days later, despite your natural way of life, you wanted to go to the hospital. At eleven o'clock in the evening, you called the general practitioner, who could not be reached, but you did call the general practitioner's office, near the hospital. I said it was OK, we went by car. A young doctor there said there was nothing he could do because the problem of exhaustion had existed for some time, he found. You made it clear to him that you would not go home again. Then, after consulting a colleague of his, we were 'allowed' to go on to the emergency room in the same building. You stayed there in Diakonessenhuis, Erik and I went home, after we heard which department and room you would be taken to and the visiting hours. During the visiting hour at the hospital, the first time we could see you again, we were with you and heard the results of the examination. Two young women, internist and physician assistant, told us that you had a metastatic tumour in your stomach, which was no longer treatable. You were struggling, for months you had been in a lot of pain, you thought it was unfair, you had given so much to others and now you would not get better. Erik and I stayed at the hospital, even after visiting hours, fortunately you had a room to yourself. Incredibly, the door, cupboards, curtains and walls turned out to be in different tints of yellow, your favourite colour. I was allowed to stay with you at night, there was a second bed, one person was allowed. Erik went home in the evening and was there again when the morning shift started. We talked about everything, if you weren't too tired, about how things would continue when you wouldn't be here anymore, what kind of funeral you wanted, how we would announce your passing away on Facebook, also a family notice in the newspaper. "Continue,' you said several times. You wanted us to formulate and read a text, you helped and sympathised. It made you feel good that we are planning to publish your three books that are almost finished https://www.contactmuziek.nl/weeklog.html#aankondiging, perhaps with crowdfunding. You made sure that both of us are not alone and that we can continue to tell about what you taught us. You struggled when the nurses arrived with morphine because you were in so much pain. It was a big dilemma, remaining clear until the last moment versus suppressing the pain. You endured intense sharp pain at times, especially when you changed your position while lying down - sitting down had not been possible for some time already - or when drinking or eating something, when you had to be moved while washing and getting dressed. We said we were standing behind you, whatever decision you took, including about pain medication. We tried to protect you from too much pressure from the nurses and doctors, who were busy increasing the number of morphine injections, which, like us, you did not agree with either. You clearly showed your gratitude, to us and the people working at the hospital. Sometimes you seemed to be asleep, but unexpectedly you said something again that was original, really you, and always clear, which surprised everyone, especially in the weakened state you were in. I was fortunately there when you died, just before two o'clock in the morning. I just called Erik, who was at home, that a nurse came by and wanted to give you a shot, because you were in a lot of pain. She would come back a little later. I still tried to discuss with you that maybe you should be less restless, otherwise a morphine injection was almost inevitable. Unfortunately, she found that nothing was changed and you got the needle in your leg. I called Erik again to tell him that, the connection suddenly broke down. I couldn't reach him anymore and he couldn't reach me. That made me extra careful, with all my attention on you. I held you, I saw a few times that you stopped breathing and told you so, but your breathing continued anyway, until you completely stopped breathing, 10 minutes after the injection. I said to you that it seemed you wanted it that way, your restlessness, the needle and then you could pass away. Like you, Erik and I find it unfair that you became ill and were about to die. Your openness, gentleness is rare in this world full of performance, underappreciation of mothers, sisters and wives adapting themselves again to fathers, brothers and husbands. Like your mother, you are way ahead of your time, we were not ready for so much naturalness, honesty and love. I am grateful that I met you, from that moment the meaning of my life began, literally, because I could not talk. A lot of things still will become clear, we are now cleaning up in the house, preparing to move, to a temporary home, five kilometres from where the new house is soon to be built. Your farewell was simple, appropriate and in silence, but not entirely, as I briefly read your life story in the presence of a woman and a man from the funeral home and two sisters who own a funeral company. We listened to a song you composed on a well-known melody, which the four of us sang at Jacobi Church. Finally, we listened to "Angel Watch", with which you often sang for your mother so she could fall asleep in the nursing home. Nice to hear your voice again, your natural way of singing. The announcement of death for the newspaper, which we talked with you about in the hospital, is in Utrechts Nieuwsblad from today, 13 September 2023 https://mensenlinq.nl/overlijdensberichten/leonoor-adriana-eleonora-beuzekom-9502734. We printed it out in colour and gave it to all the people associated with your farewell, all in all very personal and suitable, as much as possible in the way you were approaching life. Marthe |
