Why do I always think the worst?

Let me take you back to last Thursday. Our nanny was supposed to come back to work for the first time after three weeks of vacation. The kids were bouncing with excitement and calling her name. But no matter how loudly we called, our Stella was nowhere to be found. Maybe she overslept, I thought at first. But in the four years she has worked for us, she has never been even half a minute late, so that didn't seem like an option. And she also didn't respond to her text. Also a first. Then there is only one other possibility for me. She is therefore completely dead in her apartment. That's what I think. And how I will tell the kids, and what I will say at her funeral, and what I then (for heaven's sake) should wear and how I will ever manage without her.

Anyway. It turned out Stella was just hanging out on a Greek island for a day longer than I thought. Nothing dead, nothing funeral. Just a completely normal miscommunication.

“I have two girls standing next to me in the square, but they haven't been picked up”

Then yesterday. I was in France for a travel report for our summer magazine (which by the way is online for you on Friday to celebrate the vacation). Just as I was pressing the pedal of the Renault Talisman a little further down, my phone rang. School. Teacher Marijke. “I have two girls standing next to me in the square, but they haven't been picked up.” That would be my mother. She is also never a minute late. More often ten minutes early. But she didn't show up. I called our home number. No one answered. Okay. Take a breath. Then the call from teacher Marijke was the call that would change my life. My mother was of course completely and utterly deceased. Just like her mother. She also suddenly passed away at 74. Good. I could already see us driving back to the Netherlands with lots of coffee and cigarettes. Because we would of course immediately start again with that. I had to cancel that weekend in Paris and… Three tears were already rolling down my cheeks. “First call the school to see if they have been picked up by now.” Level-headed man on the left.

I called. And yes indeed. Grandma had lost her bag in the city (yes, I didn't ask further about it), had to rush back to the Etos (I would have liked to write Chanel here, but it was really Etos) and then back to the square and that’s why she was five minutes late.

What was the saying again? A person suffers most from the suffering they fear. I got that from my grandpa. By the way, he is really dead.

Image: Lidian van Megen