“It was traumatic for me, but also for him”

Mick Smits Hattink lost her husband Jan Smits in a bicycle accident. She told Volkskrant Magazine how she met the guy that hit her husband a year after the accident. “He only cried. I told him I do not blame him.”

Jan Smits (91) did not return home after his daily bicycle ride. Two police officers came to tell her that he had died. They had been together for 51 years. “I shouted: ‘That can’t be! That can’t be!’ They came inside and told me that Jan had been in an accident. He had been hit by a car when he crossed the road on his bike.”

The next day, the police came to tell her exactly how it had happened. “I immediately asked if the car had been going too fast. ‘No ma’am, it was going only 60 km/h.’ I asked who the driver was. It was an 18-year-old boy who had gotten his driver’s license the day before. It was his mother’s car, she let him go for a little drive. His girlfriend was in the passenger seat.”

Shortly after the accident, she received a request to get in contact through Perspectief Herstelbemiddeling, from the boy who had hit her husband. “But I wanted nothing to do with it yet, it was way too early for me. I thought it had to come from me, I wanted to decide the timing.”

Traumatic

A year later, she meets with the boy, through Perspectief mediator Manon. 

“I told him I do not blame him. He told me that he had to stop studying after the accident, he couldn’t go on anymore. He had taken extra driving lessons to get over his fears. When we said goodbye, he stood in front of me with tears in his eyes. ‘Can I give you a hug?’, he asked. I said: ‘Yes, you can.’ Poor boy. It was traumatic for me, but also for him.”