'Other fears remain, but my fear of death diminishes'

When I went to study in Amsterdam, I was disconnected for eight years; I didn't know what to do. I recognise myself in the struggle of young Muslim women today, who have to deal with a secular, free city. I was raised strictly reformed, while Amsterdam in the 1970s was still dominated by the free 1960s. I couldn't handle that contradiction at all.'

At the time, philosopher Marli Huijer experiences a period in her life when she is studying medicine at the Free University while being part of the left-wing squatters' scene. It is also a time when she seeks dangers, 'on the edge of death'. This is also around her in the 1980s as a result of the AIDS epidemic: 'I saw many people die then, sometimes even younger than me, bizarrely confrontational.'

In the 1990s, after her switch from medicine to philosophy, the mortality of human beings comes her way again. Her PhD thesis is called The Art of Just Living, 'but it could also have been called The Art of Just Dying'. For her research, she interviews AIDS patients who 'deal with death differently' because they refuse all therapies, 'thus actually creating another present in our present'.

To such an alternative view, she contributes again in 2022 with The Future of Dying, in which she argues that modern humans do not know how to cope well with their finitude. Medical science has significantly increased lifespan, with the downside being that our expectations of it have increased even more: 'The desire to live longer becomes more intense the longer we live.'

Against this denial of death, Huijer wants to place 'attention to dying well'. She herself has the impression of living in 'spare time', having outlived both her father (who died at 57) and her mother (65) at the age of 67. Secretly, she thinks she may well suffer the fate of her mother's mother, who died at the age of 100: 'How should I shape all this time, I sometimes wonder. In any case, I want to write three more books before I turn 80.'
 

What made death play such a big role in your life?

'When I was 7, I suddenly became aware of it. One bad day, I was riding with two brothers in a school bus, where a car smashed into it. Great panic, I saw a dead person on the street and my younger brother was suddenly gone, he appeared to have run home. A few hours later, a neighbour drove into a house in our neighbourhood. For months I couldn't sleep, all the time I was terrified that a plane would fall on my head. I didn't understand that for a long time, but it probably had to do with a war trauma my mother suffered. She lived on Goeree-Overflakkee during the war; her sisters were in the resistance. Many planes passed over there, sometimes one crashed. I was baptised in a dress made from the parachute of a deceased Allied paratrooper, you don't make it up. I later heard that story from my mother, then she must also have told me something about a plane crashing. That's how I explain my fear at the time. My father sat next to my bed during those months when I couldn't sleep, my mother refused. I think it was too close for her. She never talked about the war again either.'
 

Did it, in the end, work out between you and your mother?

'I always kept an extreme desire for any kind of intimacy with her. I never got that. She never touched us. As my eldest brother once put it, 'She was a cold fish.' Now we find that behaviour incomprehensible, but in my generation, many women were never touched by their mothers. In those days, that was fairly normal. I got my warmth from my father, though he too did not touch me.'
 

How did you do that?

'My father admired the intellect of his mother, my grandmother, and focused his attention entirely on me. He enjoyed talking to me at an ever-higher level about everything - from Sartre and Heidegger to theoretical physics, his own field of study. I loved that attention. What I didn't get physically, I got intellectually. As a result, I went through high school whistling. The problem was that he didn't do that with my brothers. He was frustrated with my eldest brother's school performance, which led to endless arguments. That was complicated for me, because while I wanted to be the darling, I also wanted my brothers to love me.

'That picture changed when I had a major conflict with my father over religion in my adolescence. As a reformed girl, I had ended up at an Eindhoven Catholic school in a class full of non-believing children. In debate with them, of course, I could not prove that God existed. When I put my questions about this to my father, he didn't know what to do with it either. He forced me to go to catechism, where the pastor went mad with me and eventually asked my father if I could stop. But my father demanded that I stay in catechism. He grew to dislike me more and more during that time. Finally, he thanked God on his knees when I left home. My mother reminded me of that joy for years to come.'
 

How would you describe yourself in that time?

'A wildcat, extremely extroverted. I was the smallest of everyone, but had unimaginable energy. A little akela, leading with a drum. A wounded little bird too, who manages to survive by being clever. 'If I learn really well, I can escape from this,' I thought from the age of 14. What helped me was that I had a heart friend since kindergarten. Her mother always protected me. Whenever my mother did something nasty, she said, 'It's not you, it's her.' She gave me something of the basic trust that my parents could not offer me.'
 

In your adult life, you continued to visit your parents even though they didn't like your Amsterdam life. Did you still hope to receive intimacy from them?

'Yes, I think so. As an adult, you keep a longing for a childhood where the world is safe and your parents protect you. Even if they don't let you in physically and emotionally, they still offered you some form of protection: you get a roof over your head and food to eat. That intimacy of your childhood is lost later, but if, like me, you didn't get basic trust, you are always insecure and think: I did something wrong, which is why my parents didn't give it to me. Then you start writhing like a worm in the hope that one day you will still get that love.

'In my mother's case, that was a losing battle. At the end of her life, I thought I was going to succeed one day. She was in hospital, bald and skinny, I watched over her at night. Suddenly, her hardness had disappeared. I touched her several times and stroked her head, she couldn't stop that too. I felt such warmth for her. The next morning, I went home to take a shower. Once back, I wanted to pet her again, but she cried out adamantly: 'You stink!' I was completely out of it. I yearned for her love, but then understood that it would never come. For a moment I was very close, immediately she slammed the door shut.

'After her death, the feeling prevailed: I have failed. After the birth of my son, my mother and I had found each other in caring for him for a few years, but after a few years that was over again. We never dared speak to each other about her inability to touch me. After her death, I had to learn to live with that. Processing that took me a long time.

'With my father things did work out. In 1983, when I was allowed to talk for an hour on the radio about my work as coordinator of the Junkie Union and my ideals, he was proud of me. In his last year and a half, I felt I had him back. Our intellectual alliance overcame the barren, religious one. During that time, he also accepted that I did not believe. He no longer experienced my choice of philosophy, but he would have loved it.'
 

After all the reflection on death, how do you view your own mortality?

'It allows me to see dying as a normal part of my life. I also talk about it a lot, for example with students dealing with the death of a parent. I don't then want to move on to the next topic as quickly as possible, like some, but always find it worthwhile. Being involved in it also gives me a kind of direction. I cannot direct fate, but I can prepare myself for how I want to deal with the unexpected.

'In terms of content, my thinking has not changed much, but it does become more intense, because at my age, death is more emphatically in the picture. I often feel grateful that I am still here. I also marvel at that, precisely because I have experienced so much death. My perspective has also changed, though. Other fears remain as intense, but my fear of death has diminished. If I were told now that I will die fairly soon, I won't mind. I can already be at peace with that. I like that acceptance.'
 

How do you look at the incomprehensibility of death, the soon to be no longer there?

'In that respect, I am a stoic. Before me there were millions of years, I have never been bothered by that. After me there will be millions of years again, I am not bothered by that either. I rationalise my absence within a second. Another factor is that I have the feeling that in a way you stay. When my mother was buried, I said to my son: 'She is under the ground now, worms live there and flowers can grow on that earth, it's not like grandma is completely gone.' I myself would also like to be buried and then not in a coffin, that takes me far too long. All those atoms continue to exist, I find that a comforting idea. You don't know whether they will somehow ever come together again. I don't think Nietzsche's idea of eternal movement and recurrence is so crazy.'