Louise Mühlnickel-Becker

On Sept.3, 2017 the ashes of Clari, Louises daughter, were scattered on her mothers grave by Tom Schröder, her youngest son who had lived with her in their home at Utrecht, Holland where the family had arrived from Bandung in 1951. Until now, her ashes had been kept in an urn in our Utrecht garden after her death in Jan.2010. Present at this 2nd funeral ceremony were Claris friends Elina Farida and husband Alfonzo Kopoaha from Bandung, and Jelpris Andre Topuh from Sangihe island (Sulawesi Utara), where her husband Paul Schröder was born in 1903 as a son of missionary Gustav Schröder. This union with her mothers last resting place was the best destination of her ashes, Java being their native soil as 'Anak Indonesia'. She had been for us her children a warm-hearted, sensitive, noble and very responsible mother who had never felt happy in Holland. Often she had sought support from her own mother, after having been ruthlessly deported in 2004 by her children to an old peoples boarding house in Zeist, where she felt like back in the Japanese prison camp where her mother had died in her presence less than a month before the end of the war. Now together with her again she hopefuly finds her deserved spiritual peace - or at least so in the minds of the people who had loved her. On the right photo above, centre: mother Louises portrait; left: Clari and Paul celebrating the birth of their first child Ingrid in 1938; and right, Clari jubilant with her newly born child. Sidephoto: the participants in the ceremony. The Bible had been guide and centre piece in our family's history and lives. Clari had always practiced real Christianity in everyday life – a hard struggle in this cruel world. This was her own little bible she had given to me, to read and practise as she had done. Sluiten