{"id":6387,"date":"2024-03-14T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/bibliotheek\/looking-death-in-the-eye\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T14:41:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T12:41:59","slug":"looking-death-in-the-eye","status":"publish","type":"library_pt","link":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/library\/kolommen\/looking-death-in-the-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Death in the Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date\"><time datetime=\"2024-03-14T16:00:00+01:00\">14 March 2024<\/time><\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But at what cost? What does a 3-month-old baby boy take away from the struggle between life and death? Will what happened to him become his frame of reference? Will it determine how he behaves? How he reacts to good and bad news? Or can we just dismiss all of this, because he was simply far too young? As a parent, you naturally hope for the latter, but you fear the former. No matter how young you are, no one emerges mentally unscathed from such a struggle.       <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last year, Milan gave us a glimpse into his thoughts for the first time. My father, Milan\u2019s grandfather, passed away on October 13 from cancer after a long illness. Milan was 100% convinced that his grandfather would live on. After all, he had beaten cancer\u2014so surely his grandpa would too, right? He could talk about this easily and lightly. Everything would be okay. As his grandpa\u2019s condition continued to worsen, Milan grew increasingly quiet. I\u2019m sure it was very hard for him to see firsthand that his belief was no longer true at that moment\u2014that his strong and positive grandpa had lost his battle with cancer.          <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After his death, Milan doesn\u2019t want to talk about it. Not a word. Even mentioning his name is too much. Strangely enough, I sometimes feel that he blames Grandpa for not having won. To him, it makes sense: I survived, so I expect the same from my grandpa. He might even feel abandoned\u2014not just because of what happened, but also because of what he believes in. Cancer is now suddenly associated with death, not with life.       <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe I\u2019m reading too much into my son\u2019s young mind. But I see someone who\u2019s grappling with questions he\u2019s still far too young to handle\u2014questions that just come at him. Finding the answers to them takes time and experience. It\u2019s all part of who he is and how he\u2019s growing. I can\u2019t\u2014and don\u2019t want to\u2014protect him from whatever comes his way. All I can do is serve as his moral compass, as the guardian of everything that makes his life so wonderful. If that has even the slightest influence on his answer, I\u2019m a happy father.       <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Jan Burger<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facing death head-on. My son Milan was 3 months old when he had to go through this because of eye cancer. Thank God, a whole series of treatments gave him a future.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6388,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_daextauttol_enable_tooltips":""},"library_cat":[112],"class_list":["post-6387","library_pt","type-library_pt","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","library_cat-kolommen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_pt\/6387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_pt"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/library_pt"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"library_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_cat?post=6387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}