Poem's stories and comments
Story by: Rosalien Beks Photo credits: Piet Beks
Farewell to Maurice
Sunday morning January 12 th. Piet and I enjoyed our breakfast.
The phone rings. Piet answers and our friend Yvonne is on the other end.
MAURICE IS DEATH.
My life changes in a few seconds.
How I made it through this Sunday I just don´t know anymore.
Anyway there were lots of tears.
Later on that week I started to realize, despite my sadness, how lucky I in fact had been, in other words all six of us.
My memories went back to October 2002:
The six of us: Mark and Yvonne, Adrie and Monique as well as Piet and myself flew to Miami for a week.
Without any doubt of course, our main goal was The Bee Gees.
And the visit to the Middle Ear studio. (see for full coverage of Miami visit including studio: the upcoming report of Yvonne, which will be published on this web site soon as well).
Looking back I have to say the visit to Maurice has been the highlight of the entire trip.
Thursday October 10th. we went looking for Maurice and Yvonne´s house.
After searching for some time we finally found it.
We were very exited. Would Maurice be home?
There was only one way to find out: just ring the bell.
Through the intercom we then asked if it would be possible to speak to Maurice for a moment.
Imagine our surprise when the gate opened spontaneously!!
Robin, the domestic help, came to us and we told her our story.
Robin said she´d inform Maurice about our visit but immediately told us that at the moment Mo was very busy.
After some minutes she came back telling us Maurice at the moment was phoning with England and afterwards would have to leave for a trip to the Bahama´s, but anyway we could wait outside the gate until he´d leave.
Waiting was no problem at all.
We looked for a nice spot in the shadow and waited what would going to happen next.
Our pleasure however soon was over because of an angry neighbour.
He´d seen us coming out of the car and carefully watched us: six unknown people with photo cameras. Maurice and Yvonne´s house is situated on a guarded and private island and the neighbours don´t really like strangers to visit.
This angry neighbour started to shout telling us that tresspassing was forbidden and that he´d paid a lot of money for his privacy.
He planned to call the police if we wouldn´t go away immediately.
What to do next?!
Somehow we did understand this man but on the other hand didn´t like to leave without having spoken to Maurice.
So we decided once more to ring Maurice´s door bell and through the intercom we asked Robin, the domestic help, if she could ask Maurice to come as quickly as possible because his neighbour had threatened to call the police.
And yes… after two minutes Maurice came rushing outside yelling: `I´m coming to save you`!!
Maurice put our minds at rest (he knew the grumbling neighbour) and took the time to answer our questions and signed our photos and other stuff.
He liked our small gift: a book with beautiful photos of Holland.
Maurice said he knew Holland and specially Amsterdam of which he of course had a nice story to tell about.
However Maurice still had to take care of some business before leaving he promissed to come back to give us an opportunity to take some photos ( without any gate in between )
After about ten minutes he came outside again and gave us the chance to take some lovely shots.
Of course for us all went by much too fast but he now had to leave for the airport.
He thanked us for everything and hoped to see us soon again in Europe.
Waiting for his departure we walked around a bit near the gate trying to enjoy this until the very end.
The photo cameras ready to do their jobs once again and to miss nothing.
While leaving for the airport he waved at us from the car yelling: `have a save trip home guys!
When we now remember these last minutes… Maurice drives away from our lives in both senses of the word.
The memories of our Miami trip are beautiful but then again when looking at the photos and watching our video recordings it makes me very sad.
Maurice looked so good and still I cannot realize that we won´t ever see him again.
Maurice thanks, I´ll never forget you because every day I hear your voice and then I think:
Farewell Maurice, maybe until later
Rosalien.