Hendrik Groen

“An eighty-year-old man has managed to climb Mount Everest. I have enough trouble stepping up on the curb. It isn’t fair.”

— Hendrik Groen

“A dementia patient yesterday stuck a billiard ball in his mouth, and it couldn’t be dislodged by any means.”

— Hendrik Groen

“Evert recently asked the assembled, out of the blue, if any of them were still keeping their pubic hair properly trimmed.”

— Hendrik Groen

“Only trivial annoyances still matter. “If Greece goes bankrupt the bingo prizes will probably get smaller,” was Mrs. Schouten’s analysis of the…

— Hendrik Groen

“Another pet catastrophe: Mrs. Schreuder accidentally vacuumed up her canary while she was cleaning its cage.”

— Hendrik Groen

“I may possibly be a candidate for Alzheimer’s myself, since I’m finding crude jokes much funnier now than I once did. I…

— Hendrik Groen

“I’ve been a bit constipated lately, you see, and the Virgin Mary calendar hangs in the bathroom. It has passages from the…

— Hendrik Groen

“Mrs. Aupers has taken to walking backward of late, because she thinks it makes her have to pee less often.”

— Hendrik Groen

“Code Red yesterday, wind force 10. Nobody went outside. Every storm inevitably brings up the old story about stubborn old Mrs. Gravenbeek,…

— Hendrik Groen

“Grietje had chosen a film in 3D for us to see, which was for all of us a new experience: Cars, really…

— Hendrik Groen

“I’ll give God one last chance: if at three o’clock this afternoon I suddenly find myself able to run the 100-yard dash…

— Hendrik Groen

“There’s an initiative called An Outing with Grandma. Children are rounded up to spend a day with some poor granny, no relation…

— Hendrik Groen

“Jealousy in old age sometimes goes to ridiculous lengths. Owing to the overabundance of women here, the married ladies do not like…

— Hendrik Groen

“I might as well go and sit in the Conversation Lounge downstairs. Complaining is pastime number one down there. I don’t think…

— Hendrik Groen

“At the other end of the spectrum we have fat Mr. Bakker. His record: one entire Limburg apple crumb cake and half…

— Hendrik Groen

“Mr. Bakker, this home’s biggest pain in the neck, ran his Canta through the car wash but forgot to close his window.…

— Hendrik Groen

“Be that as it may, every discussion we have here comes down in the end to one incontrovertible truth: we probably won’t…

— Hendrik Groen

“Of the people in this home close to turning a hundred, at least half wish to die as soon as possible.”

— Hendrik Groen

“An old man has drowned after driving his mobility scooter right into the Princess Margriet Canal at Kootstertille”

— Hendrik Groen

“I am having the kind of day when you wake up totally shattered, do nothing all day, and go to bed at…

— Hendrik Groen

“I was reminded of this when I read that an old couple—again in Belgium—had tumbled down the stairs together. Both died; rather…

— Hendrik Groen

“It was one of those days when you're dragging life along behind you like a bag full of sand.”

— Hendrik Groen

“Analysts of world events at our coffee table are not known for nuance, and are not deterred by lack of understanding either.”

— Hendrik Groen

“The bill before Parliament proposing that citizens have the right to clean diapers has been withdrawn. Just as I’m having to start…

— Hendrik Groen

“Then there’s Edward. A man of few words. He is hard to understand because of his stroke, but he chooses his nearly…

— Hendrik Groen

“Life in here consists of either never or always. One day the food is “never served on time and always too hot,”…

— Hendrik Groen

“My scooter now runs at a top speed of fifteen miles per hour, I think. Cyclists and even some motorcyclists are startled…

— Hendrik Groen

“Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. What are you supposed to do with that? Try to remember it?”

— Hendrik Groen

“I don’t like autumn. Yes of course, the colors are nice, but they’re the colors of necrosis.”

— Hendrik Groen

“In Norway they’re watching a TV show that’s just twelve hours of nonstop knitting: “from sheep to sweater.” To promote the notion…

— Hendrik Groen

“Mrs. Aupers is relatively new here. She has taken to reading aloud the newspaper obituaries at coffee every morning.”

— Hendrik Groen

“On parting, a kiss on both cheeks. I felt myself get all hot and bothered. Jesus, I’m eighty-three years old!”

— Hendrik Groen

“A nation’s level of civilization can be measured by the way it treats its oldest and weakest citizens.”

— Hendrik Groen

“When I’m out of clean undies I just put the least-dirty pair back on,” one of my fellow residents announced without blushing.”

— Hendrik Groen

“Physicians are so good at what they do these days that you hardly ever see anyone who’s healthy” is how he ended…

— Hendrik Groen

“Sixty-four percent of the elderly believe in the right to end their lives in a humane manner once they’ve had enough.”

— Hendrik Groen

“His philosophy: the only point of being alive is to kill time as pleasantly as possible.”

— Hendrik Groen

“They do make a molehill out of every bull in a china shop, don’t they,” said Mrs. Pot upon hearing about the…

— Hendrik Groen

“Woe to the man who thinks he is worth fifty-six times more than the woman who lovingly performs the dirty work.”

— Hendrik Groen

“And after that trip, I'll have to come up with another plan. As long as there are plans, there's life.”

— Hendrik Groen