Accordingly, Gloria and I presented ourselves to the reception office of the Mill Hill Missionaries Centre at 11.45 am on 25th October, 2016 where the staff cordially received us. And Fr. Arie Braak, the Director and Hospice greeted us warmly and promptly escorted us to Room No. 118 where Bro. Ben had been living since his return from Sabah.
As expected, Bro. Ben was happy to see us and enquired why I had not brought our Archbishop along to visit him!
We hugged and greeted one another and after all the sweet formalities we settled down in his room to watch a video that I had produced with the professional help of Kiddy Mackery and his wife. It was a video which basically contained the messages of Bro. Ben’s children and the folks of Bundu Tuhan whose lives he had touched deeply.
It also show-cased ALL the medical specialist hospitals in the city of Kota Kinabalu... as we had hoped to make an impression of our state of art medicare facilities to the Mill Hill Superiors so they would allow Bro Ben to return to Sabah.
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As Bro. Ben watched the video in deep silence and engrossed in his own thoughts, Fr. Arie had to attend to a few urgent telephone calls in his office. There in the privacy of his room, Bro. Ben sat on his wheel-chair completely entralled as he listened meticulously to every word that his children were speaking him.
Inevitably, he would reach out for his towel and wipe his face as his tears flowed freely.
As Bro. Ben was preoccupied in listening to the message of the children to him, his personal nurse appeared in his room, kissed him affectionately and invited us all for lunch in the dining hall of the Retirement Home.
Shortly after his lunch, Bro. Ben pushed a button from his wheel-chair and his nurse arrived and politely asked to be excused as she needed to put Bro. Ben to sleep on his bed with the help of a machine.
As such, Fr. Arie invited us to his office for a meeting as I had requested in my email to him.
Thus, as we met over a cup of coffee I asked if Bro. Ben had voluntarily returned to Holland for a medical check-up and if he would be returning to Sabah when he regained his health. Looking straight into my eyes he said firmly, “Bro. Ben had retired as a Mill Hill Missionary and he is staying right here in Oosterbeek under my care!
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And he is not going back to Malaysia or anywhere, because it is NOT POSSIBLE.
As you can see his life now revolves around a medical equipment or machine that lifts him up and down from his bed! This same machine assists him in all his daily movements and activities in the bathroom and toilet with the help of his nurses as well! We believe that we have the BEST medicare, equipment and trained and caring personnel to take care of Bro. Ben in our hospice here! He is one of us in the Mill Hill family and we are responsible to take good care of him now that he has retired. Yes! We know that you all love him too... but can he survive the journey to Sabah?”
When our meeting with Fr. Arie was over we sadly headed towards Bro. Ben’s Room No. 118, led by a veteran Mill Hill Missionary (expelled from Sabah in the 1970’s) Fr. William Vander Salam who joined us at the meeting with Fr. Arie! Sadly, it was to be our last hour with Bro. Ben and I was overcome with despondency at the prospect that our mission to Oosterbeek for Bro. Ben’s return to Sabah gradually appeared to be fading and fizzling out...!
And as Fr. William was looking for Bro. Ben’s set of false teeth and helping him to put them on for a group photograph with us, the veteran missionaries were poking fun at one another.... and the whole room was filled with joy and laughter. However my heart was completely empty as I grappled with the stark reality that our mission of fulfilling the dream and last wish of Bro. Ben to return to live out his last days with the children and people of Bundu Tuhan might not be possible because of his fast deteriorating health! This was compounded by the fact that “both his legs had collapsed” and were absolutely immobile. As such, Bro. Ben needed a very specialized medical equipment to lift him from his wheel-chair to his bed and vise-versa! The same robot-like machine was also designed for his special needs and activities in his bathroom and toilet.
As I stood and looked on sadly at Bro. Ben in his wheel-chair, struggling to put on his set of false teeth I realized that Annie was in this same room on 31st December, 2015 and that in a state of shock, she had informed me of his fast declining health over her hand phone. And fearing for the worst, that Annie could well be our last tangible link to Bro. Ben, I made an urgent and desperate appeal to her that sprang straight from my heart as I texted ending thus:
PS: Can you kindly do me a favour please? Will you please give Bro Ben a warm and loving hug and kiss him on the cheek.. and tell him that the kiss is a kiss of love and gratitude from all the Christians and people of Sabah whose lives he had touched so deeply for we truly owe him a debt we can never ever pay..!
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Saying good bye to Bro. Ben was indeed a colossal and herculean formality as he stared blankly at me with his mouth slightly ajar. Mustering all my strength, I managed to “brave” myself through all the loving hugs and sweet goodbyes as Fr. William Vander Salam graciously escorted us out of the Mill Hill Gardens at 6 p.m. on 25th October, 2016.
As I trudged along the ancient pathway away from the beautiful grounds and peaceful environment of the Mill Hill Missionaries Centre, I was silently grieving for a living saint who had spent all his life serving God’s people in an apparently hostile and ungrateful land from which innocent missionaries were evicted!
In my utter disappointment, anger and frustration, I cried out to the Lord in my heart, “Lord, your good and faithful servant, Bro. Ben had been serving you for more than 58 years in Bundu Tuhan... and now that he is old, sick and feeble, we are leaving him in this faraway and lonely place... thousands of miles away from the children and the people whom he loves and misses so dearly! Lord, is that fair and is this how you treat your faithful servants when their active lives are spent...? What will I say to Bro. Ben’s children and the folks of Bundu Tuhan when I return home? It was a rather long and lonely walk back to “Sfeerhuys Lavanda Bread & Breakfast” under the canopy of the shady trees. And all the way, the Lord was deadly silent! “He must be pretty embarrassed...!” I thought to myself with a certain amount of satisfaction in my heart.
Then stopping at the exit where there was a large Mill Hill Missionarissen sign planted, I took a deep breath of fresh air and looked back for the last time over the meadows at the whole missionary complex where Bro. Ben was now resident!