On a Wednesday in 1916, Pa van der Laan died suddenly. He had pneumonia and his heart failed. I came from school with Grietje [same age as Dina] — Jan had stayed home because his dad was sick. He met Grietje on her way back from school. Grietje cried so, and thus I came home with the message that Pa van der Laan had died. I still see myself entering the kitchen. Pa was doing his books. We still lived on the large farm and he already had changed into his good clothes to go to Pa van der Laan.

I still see his alarmed face when I suddenly came in and called out, van der Laan is dead. Pa went there right away. How sad it was. It all made such a deep impression on me. The cemetery was beside our farm and on the day of the funeral I had to stay home to babysit the little ones. From our house I saw how he was buried and all the time I thought, it can’t be, he will soon rise from the grave. But everything went as usual. I can still see it before me, and I was very sad. Harm’s life now became so very hard. He wasn’t even sixteen and he had to work so hard. It wasn’t easy with those four girls being at home. But they got a steady farmhand. He was a hard-working man and lived opposite them.

When Harm was eighteen Henderika became a nurse in Wagenborgen and later Jantje married Jan Boven. So, two less. Jan became engaged to Annie and married when he was 24, when Harm was 27. Griet married a few years later with Gerrit Verwey. Jantine and Manny stayed with mother. She said to me once, when Harm turned 20, it got a lot better, because we now had a smaller family.

When I came into his life, his mother wasn’t too happy about it. The girls were happy for their brother, and I got along with them well enough. Later, I also got along well with mother van der Laan. But she didn’t want to lose Harm, and I was much too vain for her liking. I had worked all over, and I wasn’t a village girl anymore. I also wore different clothes. She must have thought, what is Harm going to do with a girl like that. It took a lot of talking and discussing before Harm would agree to get married. But I didn’t mind and thought, we’ll get there. We both knew that the Lord would lead our lives. About that, we thought the same, and God truly has made it all well. Even to this day, I cannot but thank Him for his blessings.