After he broke his spine at 19, Erwin Hout was no longer able to completely use his hands and legs. But he graduated from University, became a manager within a company, got married and has three children. The Dutch man is Mihai Neşu’s friend. He has been living immobilized for almost two decades, 50 kilometres away from Utrecht. His story speaks about a different way of understanding suffering, forever separating the compassion of gestures from the pity of words.
In Erwin’s two-storey house plus attic, in Holland, there is a special elevator that the man trapped in a wheelchair uses to go upstairs to his daughters’ rooms. “The elevator helps me be a fulltime dad: I bring them to bed, I read them stories until they fall asleep.”
Adjusting the house to his present needs cost him 110,000 euro, out of which only 30,000 euro were provided by the local community: his marketing director earnings, combined with his wife Marleen’s geriatrician salary, were sufficient to cover the difference. From his wheelchair, Erwin is able to control the whole house: he opens doors, starts the DVD player, answers the phone, sets the temperature in the living room and closes the blinds. After a 9 years’ marriage, Marleen doesn’t do anything related to the household without consulting him first: “I am the head of the family, it’s only normal that things are like this”, he continues.
“My wife is always looking for inventions”
The love story between Marleen and Erwin started when the man was already completely paralyzed, after the accident he had suffered when he was 19. The two got married in 2003, when Erwin had just turned 29: “I was straightforward and I told her: if you want children, then find yourself another man! I thought I wouldn’t be able to have children. But, even more importantly, even if this could have been somewhat possible, I didn’t want
