Day nine: her chair has moved — the paperwork still hasn't
Nine days after the forced admission, Trudy's personal belongings have been moved to the locked facility and her newspaper redirected — preparations for a long stay. The court order and the medical statement have still not been provided.
Today is day nine since Trudy was taken from her own home in Gouda on 6 July and placed in a locked facility in Amsterdam. Nine days in which one thing has not changed: her own wish. She wants to go home.
The chair moves
Today the family was informed that personal belongings have been collected from Trudy’s home and moved to the facility: her chair, her television, her e-reader and tablet, extra clothing and family photographs. Her newspaper subscription has also been transferred to the facility’s address, effective 19 July.
We note that for what it is. You don’t move a chair for a stay of days. You don’t redirect a newspaper for a stay of weeks. Every practical arrangement now being made points in one and the same direction: a stay of months. Things are being set up for staying — while Trudy herself, lucid and consistent, says she wants to go home, and while nobody has asked her son or her grandsons for their consent. Her family stands behind her wish, not behind the furnishing of a long stay.
Far from everything and everyone
And this is not just any stay. Gouda is not an address; it is thirty years of her life. Her street, her neighbours, the friends and familiar faces who saw her daily or weekly, the trusted regular caregiver — her entire world lives there. The locked facility is in another city, behind a door she cannot open, at a distance from everyone who knows her. Whoever brings her belongings to Amsterdam is not just furnishing a room — they are furnishing a life, far from everything and everyone that makes that life worth living. Nobody has shown on what basis.
The paperwork stays away
Because while her belongings have found their way to Amsterdam, the paperwork still moves in the opposite direction. Nine days after the admission, Trudy says she has still not received a copy of the court order. The family, too, despite requests from day one, has received neither the order nor the medical statement underpinning it. Her phone is still not in her possession. All her contact with the outside world still runs through a single designated contact person.
Put those two lists side by side. What has been arranged: the chair, the television, the newspaper. What has not been arranged: the document this entire admission rests on, the medical statement that is supposed to justify it, a telephone to call her family.
The questions grow simpler
The questions we have asked since day one grow simpler by the day:
Where is the order? Where is the medical statement? And who decided that an 82-year-old woman with COPD, who says she wants to go home, should be settled in for a long stay far from home — and on what legal basis?
Trudy’s birthday is ten days away. She should be celebrating it at home — in Gouda, among the people who love her.
This account is limited to facts and the family’s own observations, dated and sourced. Where a statement rests on the account of the person concerned, this is indicated. Factual errors will be corrected upon verification.