“Markus was someone special,” says Armand De Baets, his friend. “It was in his psychology as an artist and interior designer to live the way he did: on his own. He lived mainly at night. He slept during the day. No, he wasn’t living that healthily. We mainly have that image of him with a large glass of beer and a cigarette.”
Markus Verschaeren (60) has lived in a beautiful mansion along the Amerikalei in Antwerp, close to the Palace of Justice, for about ten years. Before he bought it, it housed a Hare Krishna meditation center. “That must have made it special for Markus,” says De Baets. “He has traveled a lot, to India and to the Middle East.”
The body of Markus Verschaeren was found on the first floor by a locksmith and a bailiff. They had gained access to the house because of an excessive number of unpaid bills. Next to what remained of the 1.90 meter long body was the newspaper from April 2, 2023. According to the medical examiner, the dead body had been rotting there for a year.
Metropolitan
Bridget Jones named it in the late 1990s as her ultimate fear: dying alone, and only being found after three weeks, half-eaten by a German shepherd. “I cannot say whether it happens more often today than in the past, because no one keeps figures about this,” says writer-teacher Yella Arnouts of De Lonely Funeral, a social and literary project in which poets write a personal poem for the lonely who have died and recite it. during the funeral. “We have only been active since 2008, on the initiative of writer Maarten Inghels, and only in Antwerp and Leuven, and recently also in Bruges. It all depends a bit on the importance that we as a society attach to this.”
“We are then contacted by the Cornelis & Janssens funeral home from Aartselaar, which carries out the so-called city burials for the OCMW of the city of Antwerp. These are funerals where no one has come forward to take care of the dead body.
“Usually in the days before the funeral I try to gather some information about who that person was. This sometimes means that a nurse or an acquaintance comes along to the funeral, but often you are the only person present, apart from the poet, the undertaker and the driver of the hearse.”
‘I’m glad we were still able to do this. His godson read a beautiful letter, saying that Markus had the habit of sometimes going into social hibernation, but always returned by spring. But not this time’
“The story of that gentleman at the Amerikalei is reminiscent of what we often see in practice. Someone has broken with his family for all kinds of reasons, or has been ostracized from it. That could have happened in either direction. You hear things like, “No, we stopped calling because he never answered.” I don’t think we as a society should immediately start feeling guilty. What I notice, and it pleases me, is a growing social interest in the theme. Lately we have been receiving telephone calls from smaller municipalities. Of course, it is mainly a metropolitan thing. I don’t want to think about what proportions this will take in cities like New York or Tokyo.”
Mignonettes
On Tuesday, November 28, 2023, De Lonely Funeral at the Schoonselhof arranged the burial of IH, born in Westmalle on April 1, 1949. He lost his battle against cancer on November 3, lonely in his room at the university hospital. At his last address in Deurne, Yella Arnouts only found his neighbor, the Nigerian J. “She told me that there must be a brother, but that contact had been lost,” says Arnouts. “Why or how, Mr. H. had never discussed that with her.”
At the end of the conversation, J. promised that she would be present at the funeral. It was just starting when Yella Arnouts saw the neighbor get out of a taxi. She had first been waiting for a bus that had not come, or not on time. While shuffling behind the coffin, she heard the woman express her surprise in a low voice at the absence of any other company: “In my country, not a single person is buried without anyone present. Family, neighbors, friends, acquaintances… everyone is there at the final farewell, argument or no argument. That’s just how it is there.”
In the Church of Our Lady of the Nativity in Lint, where Markus Verschaeren grew up and lived until he was fifty, on Friday, April 19, about fifty tea lights were lit around his urn, one for and by each person present. But of course that’s because the discovery made it to the media and everyone heard about the man who was missed by no one at all, except his creditors.
“I’m glad we were still able to do this,” says Armand De Baets. “His godson read a beautiful letter during the service, saying that Markus had the habit of sometimes going into social hibernation, but always returned in the spring. But not this time.”
Strong stories about Markus were told at the coffee table. About that time when he went to Africa with a backpack full of Côte d’Or mignonettes to hand them out there. About that time when he got into the car after six Duvels had clocked in quickly, encountered an alcohol test on the way and came home with a Bob key ring. That enormous body could take something. All the people at the coffee table agreed on one thing: had Markus continued to live in Lint, something so terrible could never have happened.
The Ghent funeral director Tomas Aerts is not so sure. “What used to be a typical urban phenomenon is now also appearing in more rural areas,” he says. “Although a year is of course a very long time.”
Lonely Belgians
On March 12 of this year, Mr RK was buried at the Schoonselhof. Only. Mr K. was transferred from one residential care center to another in December due to advanced dementia. Because there was a closed department where the dementia patients could not open a door without a numerical code. Mr. K. was 85 and had been a truck driver all his active life in the company that used to belong to his father. After his death, he became a business manager himself at the age of thirty-one.
“During the increasing dementia, Mr. K. sometimes became angry with the fellow residents, whom he saw as his workers,” writes Yella Arnouts in her report on eenzameuitvaart.be. “We weren’t working hard enough, he thought.”
Mr. K. was once married, and then divorced. In the last residential care center there is no one who could say whether he has or had children. In any case, he did not receive a single visit in those last months of his life.
‘This is how people fall out of circulation: because human contact is no longer necessary. While we should connect. It is not always elderly people for whom we have to organize a lonely funeral’
Nowhere in Western Europe are people over 65 lonelier than in Belgium. That was the confrontational conclusion of one in the last year Journal of Family Research published study in which the University of Antwerp and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam also participated. “We see that 20 percent of elderly people living alone in Europe indicate that they now experience more loneliness than before corona,” says Ghent sociologist Katrijn Delaruelle. “There are very strong differences between European countries. The highest percentages were recorded in Southern European countries: Greece, Italy and Malta, followed by Belgium. About one in three elderly people living alone indicate that they now experience loneliness more often than before the pandemic. Loneliness arises from a discrepancy between what people expect from social relationships and the extent to which it is possible to realize those relationships. In Southern Europe people have very high expectations of social relationships because a family culture is central there. One expects to hear or see the children on a daily basis. The pandemic made that impossible. In Belgium those expectations are slightly less high.”
In her book Lonely among people psychologist Leslie Hodge compares the physical consequences of chronic loneliness to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Pandemic
The pandemic accelerated all kinds of processes in daily life where direct human contact is no longer necessary. There is gradually nothing left for which you absolutely have to leave your house.
“I thought it was a shame that the counter of my bank suddenly disappeared,” says Yella Arnouts. “I liked that chat with that bank clerk who I had known for years, who I could go to for all my banking matters. According to the neoliberal system of continuous progress, everything must always be faster and more efficient, but I wonder: what exactly is improving? I still make my payments myself, manually. I don’t want a system to do that for me automatically. Gradually you barely exist.
“This is how people fall out of circulation: because human contact is no longer necessary. While we should connect. It is not always elderly people for whom we have to organize a lonely funeral. I had three stillborn babies in the past year. The last was the child of a Nepalese couple without papers. The mother gave birth in the hospital, and immediately afterwards they continued their journey together.”
Yella Arnouts is not completely confident about the next municipal elections. The Lonely Funeral is possible thanks to a budget promised by the OCMW. “I’m a little worried about what the next coalition could bring,” says Arnouts. “With what we do, we do not really contribute to greater speed or efficiency in the neoliberal system.”
‘Highway to Hell’
One of the most tragic lonely deaths that Yella Arnouts can imagine was that of Mr JVK, born on October 15, 1953 in Schoten. He died in hospital on September 10 last year. The scattering of ashes at the Schoonselhof followed five months later. This was accompanied by the last wish that Mr JVK had expressed on his deathbed: ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC.
“On his deathbed, the man had also expressed the wish to hand over his body to science,” Yella Arnouts explains. “Because the body was not released for cremation by the university until months later, the funeral was not possible until then. After his death, the OCMW contacted Mr VK’s three children. Because none of them responded, the funeral home called us in.”
In the cafeteria of the Ter Beke service center, Arnouts met the last friends JVK had had. From them she learned that the man had lived his entire life as a rocker and had always had difficulty maintaining relationships and managing money. As a homeless person, he once lived in a bus shelter in Lier. His only real friend was Lotus. Because the cancer no longer allowed any moving activity, Mr VK had to say goodbye to Lotus in the service center. “One of the people in the service center still had a photo of Lotus in her phone memory,” says Arnouts. “A very beautiful dog.”
In the service center, Arnouts inquired whether there was a reason why Mr VK had donated his body to science. The answer came from a certain Marijke, who had cared for him in those last months and had taken him to the hospital in unbearable pain at the fatal end: “He wanted to save his children the trouble and costs of his funeral.”
Ultimately, six people attended Mr VK’s funeral, including the aforementioned Marijke and another resident of the service center. And poet-theater maker Max Greyson, who read a poem he wrote for Mr VK. After which the inevitable moment had come for ‘Highway to hell’. At the highest possible volume.
Yella Arnouts: “While we were listening together, it struck me. I knew this song for a long time, since I was a teenager. For the first time I heard a deep longing for independence and freedom. A desire for which a price is also paid.”
