Worship
In what seems a bit of a change of course, this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Worship”. As the only mayor I’ve found in our family tree is my wife’s third great grandfather, this week I’ll be writing about three men and women of the cloth on my father’s side of the family. My grandmother had a brother who was a priest and a sister who was a nun, while my grandfather had a sister who became a nun.
Born in 1932, Marie Adriana “Riet” Komen was the youngest of child of my great grandparents, Adrianus Komen and Elizabeth Bakker. On my reading of the funeral card and “familieberichten” (“family message”, something akin to an obituary) my cousin sent me after she died, Tante* Riet entered religious training when she was 17. Tante Riet took her vows as a Roman Catholic nun in August 1954, when she was 22. She belonged to the order “Zusters van ‘t H. Hart”, which translates as “Sisters of the Sacred Heart”, which was a teaching order. Tante Riet served as a missionary in Metro Lampung, Indonesia for many of years. Tante Riet also spent time in Finland, where her order also served. By 1997, Tante Reit was Mother Superior of her order, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Later, she spent several years at St. Bernadette Monastery, in Maliskamp, Noord-Brabant before retiring to Nijmegen.
When I was in grade ten, Tante Riet came to Canada to visit my grandmother in southern Alberta. My grandparents and great aunt made the drive to visit us in northern British Columbia. During that visit she gave me a hand-painted silk bookmark from her time in Indonesia. During my last visit to the Netherlands in 2017, my dad’s cousin drove me and my parents to visit her. We literally drove across the country, going from Langedijk in Noord Holland to Nijmegen on the German border in a matter of hours. Compare that to Canada, where driving across the whole country is much longer than three hours! I wrote to her several times afterwards, but she found corresponding more difficult in her last years.
Tante Riet passed away last year, in August 2021. Funeral services were restricted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While a funeral home in Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant handled the services, while writing this it only just dawned on me that I do not know where she was interred.
Cornelis Jan “Kees” Komen was the middle child of my grandmother’s family, born in 1928. Oom* Kees was a Roman Catholic priest. I do not know what order he belonged to. In his teens, he attended Het Klein Seminarie Hageveld in Heemstede, Noord Holland, Netherlands. Hageveld was a grammar school and “minor seminary”, a secondary school that prepared boys for eventual enrollment at an actual seminary to prepare for the priesthood. Oom Kees was ordained in May 1958.
Oom Kees is buried at St. Barbara Roman Catholic Cemetery in Haarlem, Noord Holland. He shares a grave marker with two other priests. Kees’s colleagues are named as “Pastoor” on the marker, while he is identified as a “Kapelaan”, suggesting that he had been assigned to work in a secular institution such as a hospital or school.
I never met Oom Kees, who passed away in 1987, so I do not know much about him personally. Until a few years ago, the only photos I had ever seen of him were of him and the Pope.
“Grateful Memory of Chaplain Cornelis Jan Komen Born in Langedijk on April 10, 1928, ordained a priest at the Cathedral of Haarlem on May 31, 1958, he died after an active and meritorious life in Haarlem on January 8, 1987 and was buried on January 12 at St. Barbara Cemetery“
Turning to my grandfather’s side of the family, my Tante Marie van der Fluit was an Ursuline nun. Born in 1925, she likely entered the convent sometime around 1951. Tante Marie took her vows in 1954 and went by the name “Sister Melania”. As far as I have been able to learn, she spent most of her years of service in Bergen, Noord Holland. I met her once, when I was a kid, when she came to Canada to visit my grandparents. I remember being excited to meet her, because she was the first of my van der Fluit relatives living in the Netherlands who I ever met. Tante Marie passed away in October 2016 – three days before her youngest sister who lived in Canada, Anna “Anny” van der Fluit.
- “Tante” means “aunt” in Dutch. German and French as well.
- “Oom” means “uncle” in Dutch.
A Deck of Ancestors 