By: Staff Writer
November 8, 2024
A Bonaire based artist dedicates his first book to his deceased husband and said it gave him the hope that he needed to move forward without him.
Wilco Harbers, a Dutch born Bonaire citizen, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that his inaugural book of poetry, “Dance towards the Dawn,” was what he needed to move past the grief of losing his husband of 17 years in his arms. “I think it is very beautiful book. It’s an extra dimension in poetry.”
Harbers said his husband decided to take his own life via assisted suicide with the help of medical professionals after battling for some time with depression that affected his eating and sleeping patterns. “My husband chose to end his life by stopping eating and drinking. He suffered from depression for a long time, and it became worse and worse, and at one moment, he decided, I cannot do it anymore,” Harbers lamented.
He continued: “So he made a plan to do it with the help of the doctors from the hospice and he died in my arms peacefully.”
Dance towards the Dawn is a collection of poems written by Harbers who said the inspiration kept coming to him and he doesn’t understand where it is coming from
A painter and performance artist by hobby, Harbers said he never knew he had the skill to be able to write, let alone publish a book of his own poems. “I always did something with language, but I never did anything with it because my career path went another way. I became an interior designer, I paint and I was a model, I did plays and performances, musicals but I never wrote,” he admitted.
Harbers also said: “I felt I had to write. And yeah, I could have suffered more every day I wrote, wrote, and especially in the night, in bed, thinking about Arno.”
Dance towards the Dawn was originally written in Dutch, but Harbers had it translated into English for a wider audience.
The book can be found on bookshelves in Bonaire now and will be available on Amazon before the end of the year.