(in honour of Father’s Day, 2025)

I had promised Jan Koning, my village acquaintance, that as soon as I arrived in Canada, I would visit his only daughter in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. He himself was now too old and sick to make the long trip. It is one of the unfortunate consequences of emigrating that, when life rushes to its end, one cannot always expect comfort from the far away family members. Sometimes the death of a parent in the Netherlands comes unexpectedly … sometimes a father and mother in the Netherlands are too old or financially unable to come to Canada to be close to their child in the last hours of life.

Hospital Visit

No, Jan Koning could not come anymore. I didn’t tell her about her father’s wheezing. After only four steps of walking, he had to sit down again to catch his breath. Vessel constriction … his legs were black and blue. I had come to know him because our community gardens bordered each other. The previous spring, I had dug over his patch of land because he could no longer do it himself. This summer I had gained a new neighbour.  Jan Koning was finished.

So sick, and still a torrent of words. That’s how it goes when you never get visitors. Hoarded thoughts bubbling up like water from a well when someone finally comes. But the body silent, as if it had already died — too tired and jaded to cry along.

Through wet eyes, she stared at me, as if she saw her father beside me, leaning on his hoe. A fire-eating communist who, besides his employer and his government, had also cursed Canada when his only daughter travelled off as a war bride. “If she wants to see me again, mother, she can come here, I’ll be darned if I’m going to visit her in that stupid country.” How many times had I heard that? Later, he had become milder in his judgement of church, state and society. In fact, he found it hard to stomach that a non-communist government was providing him with a decent pension. When his wife died, he started talking more and more about Hilda. During the last few years, when we worked side by side in our gardens, he had always let me read Hilda’s letters. They contrasted sharply with the cheerful letters from my own children.

Canadian Pentecostal

The Canadian soldier Hilda married had left her for another woman after ten years. Hilda continued the small ‘variety’ store alone. Her regular customers thought this was brave and kept coming. Through her postman, an emotional emigrant from Zeeland who couldn’t agree with the traditional churches the Dutch had brought with them from Holland and so ended up in a “Pentecostal Church”, Hilda was converted. Like so many new Christians, she just had to speak of her Saviour. That got to be a little too much for her customers who, like most Canadians, prided themselves on their religious neutrality — and the shop went downhill fast after that.

Meanwhile, cancer was eating away at her body, but she would not allow herself to be examined, because the Lord who healed her soul would also be able to heal her body. When I read that in one of her letters, Jan Koning had cursed heavily and issued such a heart-rending denunciation of that vainglorious church and its promises of healing and prosperity, that my look turned to alarm.

During a prayer meeting, an evangelist had placed his clammy hand on her forehead, and then her body had begun to tingle as if the Holy Spirit was grazing inside. And suddenly, she was very sure that she was healed. As grateful hallelujahs echoed through the hall and arms waved in rapture, Hilda promised the evangelist that she would accompany him on his travels as a living testimony to the miraculous workings of the Holy Spirit.

I had learnt so much from her letters that this emaciated woman was no stranger to me at all.

Psalm 23

“And how is my Dad,” she asked, after lying with her eyes closed for quite a while. “Is he still so cantankerous? How come, Mr. Halsema? I wanted so much for him to love Jesus too. I have also been rebellious when I didn’t get better, but Jesus always helped me get over it.” I said, “Hilda, your father has lived a life in which he got trampled on again and again. First by his own father and later by the bosses he worked for. You just have to reckon that rebellion got to be his second nature.”

“But he has become much milder and less judgmental in recent years. I talked to him a lot about faith, there on the Bedumer road. I wanted to give him a Bible, but he absolutely would not accept it. I’ve read all your letters over the last few years, including that whole faith healing story. I think he made me read your letters just to show me that our God is just a fake – someone you can’t trust. But we do know better, don’t we Hilda?”

“Don’t put your trust in princes,” she whispered, “I have trusted people, people who pushed through their own will, leaving nothing to God. Those preachers have never sung the verse “What God ordains is always good”. And they don’t know that the light becomes very beautiful only after you have walked in the shadows for a while. I haven’t been able to read in the Bible for a while. Fortunately, I know Psalm 23 by heart … though I walk through the shadows of death … Thou art with me … I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever! Oh, Mr. Halsema, isn’t that beautiful?

I gave her a drink. She was so tired, so weary, that she did not have the strength to bring the cup to her mouth with her own hands. I helped her. The knitted cap shifted and very slowly one hand came up to her face. “Oh, you mustn’t see that,” she moaned.

I sat silently beside her bed for some time and kept holding her hand. She lay staring ahead with eyes wide open. Like the eyes of the little bird that had flown into my window and then lay threatened in my warm hand when I gently held it. What was she thinking about? About her father? Jan Koning is his wheelchair, blue-black legs under a grey blanket. I knew that in three weeks, when we returned to the Netherlands, I would also have to visit him in a hospital. Jan Koning without legs. Would he survive that operation?

“Mr. Halsema?” “Yes, Hilda?” “In my locker next to the bed is my bag. In it is a present for father. Could you give it to him?” She wanted to take the parcel out of the bag herself. This went very slowly, but I didn’t offer any help. I knew that, with this labour, she wanted to embrace her father for the last time, her father whom she had not seen in 30 years. In the tension of that moment, she looked at the door suddenly. “Och now, that too, there is my pastor.” With sudden swiftness, she placed the parcel in my hand.

Interruptus

The pastor was a cheerful man. I made to leave, but Hilda beckoned for me to stay. And no, the pastor had no objection to me staying. “So, so, a friend of Hilda’s father in Holland!” I offered him my seat, but he stayed put … after all, he was still a young guy! His overly cordial smile was grating. He started talking to Hilda and I began to feel shut out. His fast English was harder for me to understand. At first, I strained to follow his homily, but then I drifted off … it had been a strenuous afternoon for me too.

The pastor bent down to talk with greater intimacy to his church member, propping himself up with both hands on the white sheet that suddenly stretched tightly over her tiny body. I saw the pained expression on Hilda’s face and quickly untucked the sheet from the mattress on my side. “Oh, sorry,” said the pastor.

Did I hear correctly? Sister Hilda could still be healed if only she believed more deeply and strongly. Did she remember how Peter sank into the water when he suddenly began to doubt the Lord’s omnipotence? Did she still pray that the power of the Holy Spirit would return in her?

“Halsema!” The hoarsely whispered shout was hurled into the sick room with almost supernatural force. The preacher jumped up, startled. I hurried to his side of the bed and, without a word, I pushed the young man towards the door. I regretted then that he uttered an ugly word in the corridor. Pastors are not supposed to do that, even when they are angry. He did allow me the time to tell him, in my best English, that sister Hilda was much closer to her Lord than he was. Later I regretted that a little. By now I should know that God is approached in thousands of different ways.

I had my little Dutch Bible with me and read to her from it. Before saying my goodbyes, I prayed with her. “Funny,” she whispered, “now I suddenly realize that I always read from an English Bible but still pray in Dutch. You mustn’t forget to give that parcel to Dad, though, and give him my warmest greetings. Tell him I think of him every day. May I give you a kiss for my dear father?”

I found it hard to find the hospital exit …

The End

I presented Jan Koning with Hilda’s gift at the retirement home where he came to live after his surgery. With very fine stitches, she had embroidered Psalm 23 on a beige cloth. “What am I going to do with that,” Jan grumbled. “Hang it on the wall above your bed,” I said somewhat gruffly, “surely you could be a bit more grateful that your daughter was thinking of you, in the last year of her life, with every stitch that she embroidered on that cloth.”

I continued to visit Jan Koning until the last week of his life. There he would sit in his wheelchair next to his bed. The aides had to turn it so that he could see Hilda’s gift, which sometimes kept his gaze for many minutes. One morning, a nurse called to say that Jan had passed away in his sleep. And that the previous evening, when she had brought him his medicine, he’d pointed to the wall above him and she had heard him say softly, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing … !”