A remarkable love
My father-in-law's death brought back memories of an extraordinary love story that lives on
In a few hours, my wife Annik (ah-NEEK if you’re a stickler for proper pronunciation) will be landing in France, an unplanned trip so she can reunite with her sister Brigitte in the French village of Hegenheim, nestled on the border between France and Switzerland, and lay my father-in-law, Henri Rene Aeschbach, to rest and settle his earthly affairs. He died last week at the age of 90, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been battling COVID-19 for the first time and I’m just now coming out of the fog that came with it, or I was just taken by surprise to learn of his passing, but I’ve felt a swirl of emotions and my response has been to write. I stumbled out of the gate; “Papapa passed away,” I texted to our three adult children after Annik called me from work with the news, only to learn that she would have preferred to call them individually with the notification, as she did with me. I was instantly apologetic and ashamed at my apparent insensitivity, but all I could think about was that they should know. I refrained from posting anything on social media until after Annik had some time to collect her thoughts and share them, and after that, the words just came tumbling out, here and here and here. Forgive me if I repeat some of those words in this note. I’m wrestling with my emotions about his death, and I didn’t expect that.
His death was, as far as we know, peaceful and unremarkable, the way we all would like to slip off this mortal coil. He was living alone in the same house he built for his family and moved into in 1968 since his wife of over 65 years, Charlotte Alice Cron, had passed away nearly two years earlier, on May 11, 2022. Like him, she was a few months removed from her 90th birthday, having reached that milestone in March of that year. He had turned 90 last September, and his days mainly consisted of tending to his garden and parakeets, a hobby he adopted after he could no longer raise rabbits, and working on odd projects like melding two broken ladders together to create one working one. That was so like him; the story of him collecting two wrecked Austin-Healey Sprite sports cars and building one working car out of them, with a wooden bench for their two little girls, so it was family-friendly, had become a family legend.
A home nurse visited on Thursday morning to check on him but didn’t find him, even though the inside lights were on. It wasn’t until the next day, during the 2nd of two visits, that she ventured to the back of the house to find him lying on the steps leading up from the house into the garden area. The ladder project had fallen to the ground, but it didn’t appear he had been on it; there were no bruises or signs of physical trauma on his body. He was resting on his back, almost as if he had laid down to nap and never awakened. During a previous visit, the home nurse had found him passed out on the floor inside, and his doctor speculated a sudden change in blood pressure brought on a fainting spell. He had a similar episode at a restaurant, so there were signs that this day was coming. The best the doctor can determine is that his heart stopped and never started back up - a cardiac arrest, which, I learned at my advanced age, is different than a heart attack.
My initial reaction to Annik’s recounting of how he may have died was sadness that he died alone and no one knew where he was until they made an effort to look. As my practical spouse would say, it probably doesn’t matter to him, and it was quick and painless. Sadness is for those who think consciously of the circumstances and have a picture of being surrounded by loved ones as they vacate this physical form. The other emotion was wonder, and it is because of the revelation I had over two and a half years ago when I had an ultrasound imaging of my heart and watched it beating incessantly. It occurred to me then that this muscle of the human body never takes a day off until you die, and I marveled at the notion of this fist-sized organ working all the time, day and night, awake or asleep. I had that same sense of marvel when I imagined that Henri’s heart, which had been going non-stop for over 90 years, finally finished its work and simply stopped. It’s made me think that I could get a lot more mileage out of this amazing creation if I took better care of it; given my health, it’s a miracle it’s “never not working” (apologies to Troy Palamalu and Head and Shoulders!).
So Henri Rene Aeschbach was my father-in-law, and his passing caused me to reflect on the remarkable nature of Annik’s and my love story. I found a photo in an old album of her as a seven-year-old girl standing beside an old MG Midget in front of the new house her father had built for the family. They moved into that house in the spring of 1968, the year my father was stationed in Thailand with the U.S. Air Force, loading munitions onto fighter aircraft flying sorties into North Vietnam. I was a skinny, bookish, eight-year-old kid, turning nine that year, and my mother, siblings, and I were living in Lake Charles, Louisiana, my mother’s and my birthplace, since we couldn’t accompany my father on that tour of duty. Since we had just come from a three-year assignment to Japan, I was very naive about the turmoil of the 1960s. That year saw Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinated within months of each other, and the war protests and the tumultuous 1968 presidential election were burdening me, thinking that the world was coming to an end. That same year, the woman who would become my wife and companion for life was acclimating to a new home, the same home she’s returning to this week, to review its contents and determine their disposition.
We met in 1981 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, the fourth stop on my college journey. After graduating high school, I started summer school at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. I was looking to earn some college credits I would need at Rice University, where I was planning to attend on a 4-year Army Reserve Officers Training Corps full scholarship. I dropped out when I got the call to go to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but what I dreamed would be a career-defining experience turned into a personal nightmare. I left after only seven months and 22 days, a count that sticks in my head 46 years later. I did a spring as a paid staffer with a local campaign for U.S. Congress and summer school at Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M - Kingsville) before finally landing at Texas Tech.
Annik was studying for her translator’s diploma at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting in Zurich, Switzerland, about an hour by train from her home village in France. The program required her to do a semester abroad, so she and a classmate chose Texas Tech, and in the end, only she came. I have stories about how we came together, but I’ll spare my reading audience and say that we didn’t confess our romantic feelings for one another until the day she was flying home from her semester abroad. Fortunately, she returned to help me finish summer school and graduate with my bachelor’s degree and U.S. Air Force officer’s commission. She went back home and returned the following summer to my first Air Force duty station at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. It was after that 2nd visit and the long-distance relationship we had in between visits that I decided I wanted to marry her. I proposed over the phone, and, true to form, she needed a week to evaluate the practical reasons for and against the idea before saying yes.
I traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, in February 1984 to watch Annik graduate with her master’s diploma in conference interpreting, formally present her with an engagement ring, and request her parents’ permission to marry her. I was very proud of her; at that time, she was the youngest-ever recipient of the master’s diploma, which wouldn’t be the first time she demonstrated she was the most academically accomplished one in the family. We celebrated that night and the next day in Zurich and eventually traveled to France to meet her family.
Charlotte had the gift of hospitality, and it was impossible not to feel welcome in her home, even if Henri also lived there! Annik had warned me that he was a stoic, stern, and frugal man, and I was as respectful and deferential as I could be, considering he didn’t understand me, nor I him. The only time English was spoken during that visit was between Annik and me, with Brigitte, or when Monique Uhl, a vibrant businesswoman, traveler, and cousin to Henri, stopped by to visit. The things I recall most about the trip were 1) getting sick and having Charlotte apply a home remedy of grilled onions wrapped in a towel on my chest, 2) Brigitte and Annik arguing about when she was going to tell Henri about our marriage plans, and 3) Annik getting angry at me because I was being so cautious about not being a glutton in her parents’ presence that her mother thought I disliked her food! Annik had already told her I was a big eater, and she prepared accordingly. As I said, she was a wonderful host!
Eventually, everything settled, and I returned to Bellevue, Nebraska, my residence while stationed at Offutt Air Force Base, to prepare for the wedding. We had planned a small ceremony with my U.S. Air Force co-workers present and my boss officiating, but my mother insisted that we come down to Lake Charles, Louisana, to get married. So it was that Henri and Charlotte made their first official visit to the United States, arriving in Lake Charles for a July 14th wedding - it was also the day they married in 1956. Moreover, July 14th is Bastille Day in France, so with those associations, it was doubtful I would forget the day! Of course, we have our wedding stories, our favorite one involving Annik’s name being misspelled on a gift wine glass because my mother couldn’t pronounce her name and misspelled it on the initial invitations that went out! To this day, the “Arnik” wine glass is lauded as unique and often bestowed on a guest as a gesture of friendliness.
I also remember the stoic, stern, frugal father, who didn’t speak English but, as I learned over the years, understood more than we realized, being the first to weep at the wedding after giving Annik away.
Not only did the tears flow, but the wedding gifts he and Charlotte bought us were lavish and plentiful, the beginning of a lifetime of generosity toward our family and their grandchildren especially. Annik said once, “He wasn’t like this when we were growing up!”
Less than a year after we married, we found ourselves stationed in then-West Germany, only two and a half hours north of Hegenheim. From the moment we got married, it was a goal of mine to get to Europe on active duty so Annik could be nearer to her family and I could get to know them better. The four years we spent there were some of the best of my life. I was at the peak of my career in Air Force intelligence, earned a master’s degree in international relations despite vowing I would never go back to school, and eventually became a father with the birth of my daughter Amanda. Most importantly, I got to know my bride through her family and on her turf, and I believe it made a positive difference in our marriage. I see traits of her father and mother in her, which helps me understand her better and perhaps be more gracious because I know where some of her reactions come from.
This transatlantic family that came into being when a young U.S. Air Force second lieutenant slipped a ring onto the finger of a newly minted conference interpreter in Zurich, Switzerland, in February 1984 has seen a lot of years and a lot of miles. Six of those years were spent on the European continent, giving us plenty of time to make wonderful memories with her family and friends in France, Switzerland, and even the Netherlands, where her best friend from her college days, Liesbeth Wallien, plies her trade as a professional translator and interpreter. Liesbeth and her family visited us in Florida when she and Annik were both pregnant, Liesbeth with her first child, Naomi, and Annik with Briana, our second. Charlotte was present on the day of or the day after the birth of every one of our children, one in Birkenfeld, Germany, and the other two in Melbourne, Florida. Our children were christened in the same church, the Temple Protestante in Saint-Louis in the Haut-Rhin département of the Alsace region, wearing the same christening gown. While Amanda’s christening took place when we lived overseas, we made special trips from Florida to France to ensure Briana and Colin had the same experience. The families celebrated Henri and Charlotte’s 50th wedding anniversary and our 22nd at Morton’s The Steakhouse on 5th Avenue in New York City. When we were stateside, Henri and Charlotte visited often, no matter where my jobs took us - Melbourne, Florida, Huntingtown, Maryland, Lynchburg, Virginia. Looking back on it, it’s been an extraordinary journey.
Annik and I are celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary this year, but Henri and Charlotte are reunited in eternity, so we won’t be celebrating together. My greatest regret is that after we returned to the States from Europe in 1998, I never returned to the continent, even though it holds a unique and permanent place in my heart. I’ve promised myself that I will return there before the end to remember the place where my love story and the greatest family a man could ever have began.
You were part of these two worlds coming together as one, Henri. Rest in peace, father-in-law, and give Charlotte a hug for all of us.
Beautiful, Ron. Thank you for sharing all of this. Your family is in my prayers.