"Please pierce your bones into mine"

My great-aunt Jacoba Manders taught me that ageing is not disappearing. Despite our 71-year gap, she felt like my best friend. Her legacy is not material, but emotional: tenderness, resilience, and truth—an inheritance that quietly shapes how we live on.

“Please, pierce your bones into mine.”

What defines a long and happy life? Winning the lottery? Travelling the world in a hot-air balloon? Becoming the president of America?

Let me introduce you to someone far more radical—my great-aunt, Jacoba Manders.

In a country where growing old so often feels like disappearing, Jacoba was never invisible. She was not just family. Even with an age difference of seventy-one years, she felt like my best friend.

 Through my time with her—moments when I could almost feel her brittle bones pressing into mine—I rediscovered my role as a supporter, as someone who bears witness. I began to understand the weight of each fleeting moment, each fragile breath, as life nears its end. Images formed that hold both her history and the shadow of my future—a way to give shape to goodbye before it is ever spoken.

 This work became a meditation on connection across generations, on the act of witnessing, on what it truly means to age—and to die. It is about standing still with someone, even as time moves relentlessly on.

Jacoba showed me that the secret to life is not found in the extraordinary, but in the unapologetic embrace of who you are. She was ahead of her time. Perhaps even ahead of ours.

She leaves the most precious heritage I know—not in objects, but in emotions: tenderness, resilience, truth. A gift that moves quietly through generations, unseen yet deeply felt. Le mort saisit le vif—the dead seizes the living. What departs endures, reshaping the lives it touches. Jacoba’s inheritance is one of emotional knowledge, a legacy that does not fade but continues to guide the way we live on.