“When that disappears you think: why should I get up?”
“Living with two people is lighter than on your own,” says Olga. It is precisely the small moments in daily life that are missing that make the difference for her. “Knowing that you are going to get or make a cup of coffee in the morning. If that disappears, you think: why would I get up?”
Although she does not call herself depressed, she does miss the zest for life that she used to take for granted. “I’m not talking about symptoms that mean I’m really depressed, but it’s not that I think: oh, it’s morning again, I’m looking forward to it. I always had that.”
The actor looks back on the special bond with her Willem, with whom she only started a relationship later in life. “We were both forty, so we knew what we wanted. There were storms, but we knew what we had in each other.”
She describes the loss of her partner as painful and irreversible. “The nicest present you ever had is then taken away from you. And that remains very, stupid, unfortunate and annoying. That is not to whine, but to name things. People who are alone all their lives: hats off.”
Breuker died in 2010 at the age of 65 after a short illness from lung cancer. But even at the time of his illness, when they spent a lot of time together in the hospital, she does not look back with bitterness. “Then I sometimes heard on the answering machine: ‘Did you have to go to the hospital again?’ Well, we went to Erasmus MC, where there was a professor who helped us tremendously. So you live completely differently from people who have already pushed you into the grave, with good intentions.”
Stars on the Canvas see you every Saturday at 8:40 PM on NPO 2.
It was previously announced that the curtain literally falls Stars on the Canvas. The current season will therefore be the last for the program. You can see exactly why the show stops in the video below.
