Ode to Maria Antonie Rietveld-Luijben | A place in the sunlight

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Ode to my grandmother,

I unfortunately never got to meet you myself. You died of breast cancer back in 1961, at the age of 49.  Only two years after your husband, my grandfather. He too died young.

Raised in Alps on the Rhine from a French mother and a Dutch father. You met Bertus Rietveld, a farmer's son, married and left for Amsterdam. Together you started a butcher shop on Columbus Square. Like a good Catholic, you founded a large family with seven children.

While you were busy in the store and with all the work involved in a butcher shop, the oldest two children, including my mother Truus, took care of the remaining children. A young maid from Volendam helped with the housework.

When food went on sale during the war days, you and grandfather resisted by clandestinely providing meat to people who did not receive food stamps or were in hiding. It was an exciting time when your oldest daughter Adri, herself still a young child, carried meat in a baby carriage to various addresses in Amsterdam. How much fear you must have felt that something could happen to her. And what tension and stress it must have caused.  

Somewhere around you there must have been people who betrayed grandfather, because the Gestapo came to your door several times. He then fled through the attic to the roofs and was several times too fast for them. Until they caught him and he was imprisoned in the Oranjehotel, the Nazi prison in Scheveningen. After a long time he came out of there severely emaciated and very weak.                                                                                                                                                      

What must that have done to you? Having no idea where your husband was or if he would ever return home alive. How were you supposed to cope on your own with so many small children? Was the store closed at that time? Was money still coming in? After the war, Grandpa was never the strong man he was before. Both your health deteriorated rapidly.
Your daughter Truus started dating my father, a black man from Suriname. That was quite a special event in those days. Your French mother, who had been used to black people in France before, was very impressed by this charming man from Suriname. Although he did not speak a word of French she often chatted enthusiastically with him in her native language. Before my parents found a home of their own they lived with you for a while. It was very generous of you to welcome my father into your family. That made me feel nice.

So sorry we never got to meet. I would have liked to get to know you better and listen to your stories. I am sure we got along very well.