Hieronder de tekst van Hannes’ speech na het rituele snij-de-taart-aan-moment op Wiet en Heathers trouwfeest.
Wiet, Heather, family, friends,
As you might have noticed, I just spent my first week in the United States! My best friend Wiet was going to marry his beloved American girlfriend Heather here, on the borders of the Mississippi, and I was invited as Wiets best man.
Wiet and I met in the last year of secondary school, both tall and curly headed dreamers of 17. We had a lot in common, though our path not always followed the same course. Our student years in Leuven were one long rollercoaster over dazzling mountaintops of being free and being in love, followed by dark deep valleys of broken loves and periods of doubt and loneliness. Only hours of telephone conversations, innumerable evenings of making up philosophies, long games of chess and tapes full of our favourite music, helped us over these moments of floating or falling.
The years after college, living together in the Tiensestraat, feeding our three chickens or sharing beers on the footwalk in front of our house, made our friendship only deeper and richer. Meanwhile new names and faces joined our group of close friends from school. The weekends in the Ardennen, Paris or Zurich formed the foundation of a vast group of friends you could, and still can, rely on.
Honestly, it’s going to be a strange 2 years without my soulmate. Yet on the other hand, this trip to Memphis and the warm welcome by Sheila, Bob and their family and impressive network of friends gives me a feeling of relief and consolation.
Relief, because I could see that Wiet’s very own way of life is welcomed here. His open mind, his sometimes impulsive but always charming being: it mixes amazingly well with the American way of life.
But also consolation, because I know that this dreaming tall-boy is in good hands here. Heather is a caring woman, with her two feet on solid ground. Her years in Leuven and Brussels weren’t always easy, but she showed a strong character and a clear will, and her love for Wiet has proved to be steady as a rock. Living here in the house of her parents, made me realize where she learned this values.
Yes, I will leave tomorrow with rather mixed feelings. It feels a little like starting a new chapter in a exciting novel. As new horizons appear, old ones fade. We both are married now, our rollercoaster enters a new landscape. But it’s still the same novel, and I know that Wiet, and Heather, will play one of the main characters in it.
