Lady van Aefferden wished, not unnaturally, to be buried beside her late husband, Colonel van Gorkum, who had died in 1880, but law and fear of scandal prevented it. She was a Catholic and could not be buried in the Protestant section of the cemetery in the Dutch town of Roermond where he had been interred; she could only await the Resurrection alongside fellow Catholics.

So, before she died, she made it clear that she did not want to be buried in her family’s tomb; instead, she chose a burial plot in the Catholic section of the cemetery as close to her husband’s grave as possible.