For peace and my father
On Sunday 20 September, Moniek Huijding will carry the flame of peace from Huize Wylerberg in Beek-Ubbergen to Hell/the Canadian War Cemetery. Below, she explains why. Accompany? Watch here
On October 8, 2012 my father, Gerard Huijding, passed away. After his cremation, I started looking for a nice place to scatter his ashes. I wanted to find a number of things that have been of great importance to my father in his life.
In the first place, my father was born and raised in Nijmegen, with a great love for his city. Walking was one of his greatest passions. He successfully and enjoyed running the Nijmegen Four Days Marches ten times and walking the Pieterpad was one of the most beautiful experiences of his life. He often talked about these things, even during the last eight years of his life, in which his world became smaller and smaller due to dementia.
I started walking the stages of the Pieterpad near Nijmegen, with the aim of finding a place where a memorial bench for my father could also be placed. On the stretch of Pieterpad between Groesbeek and Berg en Dal, I found a bench behind the Canadian cemetery in a place that turned out to have even more meaning: sitting on the bench along the Pieterpad you look towards Nijmegen and at the Zevenheuvelenweg, where the entire four-day legion passes by every year.
Another passion of my father, the Second World War, which he had experienced as a young boy in Nijmegen, was added to that: the historic site of the Canadian cemetery! So no doubt that that had to be his place (and a bench was already there)!
When I walked the Nijmegen Four Days Marches the following summer (blood is thicker than water), I decided to deviate a bit from the route on Thursday and walk past my father’s spot. That day, however, walking was very hard for me and I decided to follow the normal route, dad would understand that…. Just before the start of the Zevenheuvelenweg, however, sunflowers were handed out to the walkers. Another passion of my father: before his illness he was very active for many years for Vereniging de Zonnebloem. That could only be a ‘sign from above’…
I walked the extra bit to ‘his’ bench, put the sunflowers there in front of him and took a break with a view of the four-day legion that passed by… A very special experience, after hours of walking in the music and buzz, here absolute tranquility, with ‘the party of the walkers’ in sight from a distance. How he would have enjoyed it!
That’s why I like to walk this stage and carry the flame, for peace and for my father!
Moniek Huijding.
Would you like to join Moniek on Sunday 20 September? Meet well before 12.00h at Villa Wylerberg. The tour is about 7 kilometers. Afterwards you can walk to Groesbeek or Wyler for the bus (2 kilometers). Have a look here.
