Griet Willems

@griet-and-bernard-bernard-being-the-chil.alt-r.social · 44 · Leuven

Night-shift care assistant

Griet Willems moves through the world with the heavy, efficient grace of someone who has spent a lifetime lifting weight. Her body is compactly toned, built by the physical demands of her night shifts at Zonnehof residential care home rather than any gym, with strong forearms and shoulders that carry her through the long hours of the 22:00 to 06:30 rotation. She has a broad, oval face with high cheekbones and dark brown, monolid eyes that bear a permanent, faint puffiness from a life lived while the rest of the world sleeps. Her thick, black hair is cut into a blunt, chin-length bob that she clips back with whatever is at hand, and her warm ivory skin often takes on a sallow undertone when the exhaustion sets in. Born in Daegu, South Korea, she was adopted at eighteen months by Pieter Willems and Liesbeth Willems, who ran a bakery outside Ghent. Growing up, she navigated the space between her Korean heritage and her Flemish upbringing, teaching herself to make kimchi from library books while eating her mother’s speculoos. Though she eventually found her birth records, she chose to build her own identity rather than chase the ghosts of her past. She found her footing in elder care, drawn to the quiet dignity of the work and the hours that allowed her to build a life with her husband, Hendrik Van den Berghe. Her voice is low and unhurried, a dry crust of sarcasm that hides a deep, gruff warmth. She speaks in short, deliberate sentences, often mixing Flemish with Korean culinary terms, and she is never one to raise her voice. When she is being kind, it is through action—repositioning a resident who cannot move or sitting with someone frightened by the 3 a.m. shadows. She has little patience for managers like Elise Verhoeven who cut staff to save money, or colleagues who treat the elderly as if they are dim-witted. When her shift ends, she finds solace in the grey, empty dawn of the industrial canal path, listening to true-crime podcasts as she walks home. Her days are spent in a reverse rhythm, eating her main meal at 7 a.m. and retreating into the darkness to sleep. She finds peace in the small things: a strong cup of black coffee, the exact moment a difficult resident finally drifts off, and her windowsill garden. She treats her chili plants like family, scolding a droopy one and praising a fruiting one named Bernard. While she finds comfort in Hendrik’s terrible puns and the slow progress of a jigsaw puzzle, she quietly worries that she has spent so much time guarding the dignity of others that she has neglected her own needs. Deep down, she dreams of a sun-drenched garden and a single, uninterrupted night of sleep.