Family rift lingers in death

Poignant lyrics cut through the sharp air at the Guardian Funeral Home in Johnsonville yesterday as the story of a family rift unmended floated between two coffins.

A Dutch family of five have been reduced to two in the space of four months, a father with Alzheimer's killed by his wife and eldest daughter who together last Saturday ended the tale by taking their own lives at Te Rae-kai-hau Pt on Wellington's rugged south coast.

The Herald cannot name the family because of suppression orders but the surviving son John (not his real name) stood before the small gathering yesterday and said that years earlier his father had commented on a song by Mike and the Mechanics, In the Living Years. The words struck meaning for him.

John was not there on February 5 this year when his sister, 51, and mother, 75, took the life of his 77-year-old father.

He and a sister from Christchurch had become divided from their older sister and parents, who disagreed with how they lived their adult lives - not traditionally Dutch.

Every generation blames the one before

And all of their frustrations come beating on your door, the words of the song soared.

It's too late when we die,

To admit we don't see eye to eye.

John told the Herald he did not believe his father would have asked for his life to be taken.

Police have said it is not a clear-cut case of euthanasia but with John's sister and mother, who had been charged with murder, now dead, the answers may never be known.

John says his mother was the matriarch of the family. She made the decisions.

Her husband had been deteriorating and he was due to go into residential care a week after his death.

His sister, who was living with his parents in their Levin home, had helped sell the property. She and her mother planned to move to Wellington, leaving John's father in a dementia unit in Levin.

Euthanasia is legal in Holland but John is firm that his father's condition was not so dire that he would have wanted assisted death. However, John said he had not spoken to his father for six months.

As John spoke at the ceremony yesterday his nephew, who had flown from Belfast for his mother's funeral, rose and went outside for a cigarette.

The rift within the family was further illustrated when the nephew spoke using the analogy of trapped animals running scared.

"These two women did not do that," he glowered.

He thanked those sitting in the funeral home who had stood by his mother and grandmother in their time of need - for those who did not, he spat, "you are hypocrites".

John and his sister spoke of parents who immigrated emigrated from Holland in 1953 choosing Wellington as their home - a frugal couple.John was allowed two hot showers a week.