LOVE CAN ENDURE ALL, B U T N O T W I T H O U T… LIANA TURNER x AUGUST 17, 2015
A blind date was not how Christine Hanssen imagined she would meet the man she’d spend the rest of her life with. She and now husband, Hubert were from the Netherlands and had both been travelling on separate journeys in Canada. One night, some mutual friends – and perhaps fate – drew them together. Fifty-seven years later, they’re still madly in love. But love is not everything. To create a life of satisfaction for yourself and those around you, there must be more. For example, respect, patience, determination, trust, and perseverance. These qualities have been present throughout the fifty seven year marriage of Christine and Hubert Hanssen. In 2013, nearly fifty thousand Australian couples were granted a divorce – the latest count from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In spite of the heartbreak and faded love that these statistics indicate, Christine and Hubert Hanssen’s bond has lasted for more than half a century, a handful of countries and countless challenges. It was 1959, in Montreal., sometime in April or May. Christine was asked out to dinner with a friend and her partner. “She has come from Holland,” Christine said. “Her boyfriend had a friend with him, so we
all went out together”. From that evening on, she and Hubert hit it off. “I didn’t expect it, but we just clicked, somehow…” she said. That December, they married in Toronto, where they later brought their first child into the world. “We didn’t muck around too long,” Christine said. Today, many couples casually spend tens of thousands of dollars on their big day. For the Hanssens, it was a simple affair. “It was just the two of us and two witnesses we didn’t know,” Christine said. “We went to the council chambers first but they were closed, so we went to the Uniting Church”. The witnesses, she said, were the cleaner and the gardener. “It was quite interesting,” she said. “We had just moved to Toronto so we didn’t really know anybody there. Hubert decided to try Toronto out, and I followed him there.” The family back home in the Netherlands weren’t too disappointed about missing out on the ceremony; and by the time Christine and Hubert returned in December 1959, they had a baby daughter in tow. “They were all very happy to see us and excited about us having a daughter, because they could spoil her rotten,” she said. “But I’m sure they weren’t very happy when we left for Australia.”
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When the couple decided to uproot their life once again, bringing their three young children to Australia, their life wasn’t without challenge. Their second daughter was born disabled, and faced a plethora of difficulties as she grew up. In the 60s, children – and society at large – were not altogether compassionate towards children like her. More than a decade ago, their daughter’s kidneys had failed and things were looking dire. She was hopelessly unwell, and was given five months to live. However today, she rarely shows any signs of ill health. Christine and Hubert cared for their daughter until several years ago, when the pressure of that role – on top of caring for her husband, who now has Alzheimer’s – began to prove too much for Christine. In the last six months, Christine and Hubert have moved from their home of ten years to a nearby retirement village, where they are now able to socialise more freely. For the moment at least, Hubert knows his close family. He remembers pieces of old war stories, but they’re increasingly intertwined with his own dementia-driven fantasies. Christine said there were many days when caring for him proved challenging. While the progression of his disease has not made him aggressive, seeing the love of her life fade away before her eyes has been a heartbreaking experience. It began with tiny moments of forgetfulness. Hubert would forget that he’d already checked the mailbox, or taken his pills. One day, driving his grandchildren home from the school bus, he simply forgot how to make the windscreen wipers stop. That was shortly before they took his license; his independence. That was right before he began to quietly accept that his mind was fading. Then, there were many days of angry denial. Now, there’s simply submission. As if he’s forgotten what it was like to remember. But while the memory of what he did yesterday – or several hours ago – is impermanent, their love perseveres. Decades after moving to Australia, Christine and Hubert were visiting relatives in the Netherlands. One day, they spoke to their oldest daughter on the phone. She’d bought a house with her partner, they were told. “I said to Hubert after I got off the phone, I bet you they’ll be married by the time we get back,” Christine said. “They did the
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FEATURE: LOVE CAN ENDURE ALL, BUT NOT WITHOUT…
same thing as us.” Sure enough, when they returned to Australia their daughter had married in the same fashion, with some close family and just a few friends present. They, too, are still happily married today. Love might appear in an instant, but can’t be maintained without some hard work, Christine said. “I always think if you’re happy, you’ve got to make the bad things work out as well,” she said. “I’m sure you cannot have a relationship without having bad times. There will be bad occasions, where you can’t seem to get on, you can’t seem to communicate. But we’re all different. We have different attitudes, different ways of dealing with things.” She said toughing it out through a few rough patches was worth it, while some couples were too quick to give up. “They spend thousands of dollars on [a wedding]…and maybe they want it to be too perfect,” she said. “They think there aren’t supposed to be any disagreements. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. When you get married, you’re two different people with two different upbringings, two different minds.” This July, Christine and Hubert are due to become great-grandparents.
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