We all know that the circle of life means our life is limited. We are not immortal and with every beginning there is an end.
I have been reflecting a lot on the subject of life and death for some months now since we received the devastating news that a relative had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He sadly lost his battle with this awful disease on the evening of Sunday, 31 July 2022, at the age of 59 and while he is released from his pain and suffering, it is so hard for his wife, his mom-in-law and his two beautiful daughters; one of whom is only 16 years old.
When a new life comes into the world, the new parents, the medical attendants and others wait for the first cries of the baby and when a life ends there is often silence or there is a telltale change in breathing, often referred to as the 'death rattle' as the person's life ends. My Dad, who died 15 years ago, was in a morphine induced coma when he passed away and my Mom knew he had gone when his breathing changed and there was a very audible change in the noise of his breathing.
If you want to see me have an apoplectic fit, trot out those expressions I absolutely loath "His time was up"'; "It was his time" and "When its your time, its your time". Try and say that to a grieving parent whose child has died at the age of 3; when another family are mourning their 13 year old who tragically drowns at a school camp because he was out of his depth in turbulent waters and was not a strong swimmer; another family when their child is shot in one of the tragically all too frequent mass school shootings in the USA. Those expressions for me are flippant, callous, without any sensitivity or empathy and are cruel.
I have a vague recollection of an old family friend, Uncle "Joppy" who died - he was a farmer and my Mom had been childhood friends with his youngest sister and his brother. I did not go to his funeral and his widow would in due course become my piano teacher. I must have been about 5 years old when Uncle Joppy died but my understanding of death at that age was very fuzzy. We had not even suffered the death of a family pet (yet).
I was in Grade 3 (Std 1) when I first became aware of the fact that people died and do not live forever. That year 3 people, all connected with the school where my Mom was a teacher and my brothers and I were pupils, died. We also all lived in the same street. They died in relatively quick succession of each other and were all different ages; two deaths were heart attacks and the other was a hit and run. The one person who died, relatively young, of a heart attack was the husband of my Grade 3 teacher and the father of my friend. I was riding my bicycle up and down Park Road the street where my childhood home was situated and I saw Robert (my friend) and so we chatted and in the middle of our childish innocent conversation, Robert said "My Daddy died last night". My shock was so tangible, I will never forget that conversation and how I felt I had been punched in my stomach. Robert was so happy, cheery and seemingly blasé about the death of his Dad. Possibly he did not understand or had fully comprehended the reality of the situation? I don't know and cannot remember much. I do remember hurtling home demanding answers from my parents who had heard the sad news. My Dad and Robert's Dad were at the time performing in an amateur dramatics production of Murder in the Cathedral (by T.S Eliot) which was being performed in the Cathedral of St Michael and George in Grahamstown. After the performance Robert's Dad had returned home and tragically suffered a fatal heart attack.
A year later, on a week day morning I woke up and the house was eerily quiet - the usual hustle and bustle of a busy family home preparing for a day of school and work was absent and I knew there was something very wrong. Again I will never forget that sense that something was not right. I could not find my parents and my eldest brother, Nick, told me that Mom and Dad were next door with our neighbours, John and Beryl, who had phoned asking them to go over to their house. John and Beryl's middle son, Richard, who was a couple of years older than me and was such a sweet natured, gentle boy, had died during the night after suffering a horrific asthma attack. He had not been well for a long time and a few nights before he died, he had felt well enough to come over to say "hello" - I was home alone with our housekeeper; it was early evening and we heard a noise at the back door of the house and we were too scared to open the door and he went back home (we had a shortcut to each other's properties through our gardens). Richard apparently felt very upset that he had scared Gladys and I and when I realised I could never apologise to him for being scared, I was devastated. I will always bear the internal scars of guilt, regret and despair about that. (Gladys and I had been scared as a few days or weeks before my second brother, Chris, came home and came face to face with a burglar who had broken into the house). Richard's funeral was the first funeral I attended in the Kingswood Chapel and his death did affect me.
My Grandpa Welch was the next death; he was my maternal grandfather and since those grandparents lived in the United Kingdom I did not have much of a relationship or connection with him. When he died, my second brother Christopher was living with him and our Nana as he had gone to live with them and help them as their collective health and physical conditions were deteriorating and we were due to go the United Kingdom for my Dad's sabbatical year in due course. I remember my Mom's sadness and tears when Grandpa died and sadly she could not go to his funeral.
Fast forward to us living in Portsmouth in the United Kingdom in December 1976. If my memory serves me correctly she died on 27 December and had been back in South Africa living in Port Elizabeth. My Mom was not able to attend her funeral either. And she was in a different country to her parents when both died and the pattern was to continue for my Dad when his Mother died. The Welch grandparents were in their 70's when they died.
Life trundled along and I was approximately 16 or 17; back in Grahamstown and its school holidays so I was working at the Rhodes University theatre helping out backstage with a Drama Department production. Another premature death hit home; this time it was the youngest son of family friends, someone my brothers and I grew up with, went to school with and his oldest brother was currently performing in the production I was working on. Chiff was doing his miltary service and he was killed in a horrific car accident (the mini he was a passenger in went under an articulated truck).
I remember going to the theatre for the evening performance and there was the brother in his dressing room; he was there to perform as after all the show must go on. We hugged and he was stoic whereas I was falling apart. I remember at the funeral the grieving Mom said to my Mom something along the lines of "Now I know what you go through" as my brothers had stayed in the United Kingdom after the sabbatical year of 1976 so our family had been divided between 2 countries since then. Those words struck me and I remember them so vividly as I could not and still cannot reconcile her words as there was no comparison. My brothers were still alive whereas she had just bid a final tragic farewell to her youngest son. It was the second time in my life where parents had to bury or cremate their child; which is not in the natural order of life and death. This scenario occurred too soon again - once again I have this intense recollection. My parents returning home from a church meeting and my Mom saying to me "Something so sad has happened" - I blurted out "Julian has died" (Julian being a prominent person in Grahamstown known to my parents and was battling cancer). He had not died but his daughter had been killed in a car accident - she was travelling back to Grahamstown from Cape Town to be with her ailing father and there was an accident. How had I known the news was something tragic about that family? Its something which has always haunted me and I only have been able to be reconciled with this with the understanding that there are questions which I will never have the answers to.
My parents and I spent August 1982 to July 1983 living in Ithaca, upstate New York in the USA. My parental Granny, Granny Helm, lived in Grahamstown and towards the latter part of 1982 she was ailing. In those days when we received a telegram, you would receive the message via a telephone call and it was on a Saturday afternoon that the phone rang, we were home and it was a telegram. Expecting the news to be that Granny Helm had passed away we were so shocked to learn of the untimely death of my Uncle in Port Elizabeth. My cousin (the very same one whose husband sadly died on 31 July 2022) was a few weeks away from her 16th birthday and my Aunt was a widow at the age of 48 - both so young and once again we were not able to be with my Aunt and cousin at their time of grief, mourning and adjusting to the new life journey which was unceremoniously thrust upon them. My Granny Helm also died on Boxing Day (26 December 1982); history repeated itself with my Dad not being able to attend his Mother's funeral.
I will digress here taking a quantum leap to a Monday in September 2002 when my sons, Morgan and Tristan, were told the news, by me, that their Dad (whom I had divorced in April 2001) had died. He had a heart condition and he would phone me and say "I am not going to take my pills today" and end the call. I was told he had passed away in his sleep. Sadly, abuse of every form, meant that my sons did not really grieve or mourn the loss of their Dad. At the time my parents were in Johannesburg and they came to our home to be with us and support us. No tears had been shed, no weeping, wailing, sobbing or other displays of grief but when my Dad told us all the story of how his own Father had died when my Dad was barely 5 years old and he cried telling us his sad tale, I cried and so did Tristan who was 8 - we cried because my Dad and his Grandpa was crying. My Dad was 71; his Father had been dead and absent from his life for 65 years and his grief was so fresh; a stranger would have thought that he was crying for the person who had passed away that very day. The person crying in the form of my Dad was that little 5 year old boy who was shielded from the truth of the death of his Dad for quite a few days until he eventually spoke up and ask his Mommy, his Aunts and his Granny why they were not telling him his Dad had died (he had been killed in a car accident). My Dad was exceptionally clever and all the women in his childhood home knew that and they should have told him the news immediately not trying to keep the news from him; he was perceptive and tragically he would forever live with the internal scars of that hurt, grief and betrayal. My personal feeling is that shielding my Dad from the sad news of his own Father dying stunted him emotionally for the rest of his life and I find that heartbreaking.
Death, dying, grief and mourning have been almost taboo topic for far too long. Its an inevitably and an eventuality for everyone. I know Morgan gets impatient with me as I do get emotional and sad about the loss of life especially when friends have to suffer the death of a child, someone's life is ended in a heinous manner and, for example, a newly married bride finds herself a widow 3 days after saying "I do" when her husband suffers a fatal heart attack. I am an emotional and sensitive person. I am compassionate, empathetic and maybe I feel all these losses for my family, friends, for myself and others so keenly because I have been exposed to a lot of deaths, if there is such a thing. One aspect of writing about this and digging deep into my memory box examining my timeline and events is hard yet therapeutic; and because I felt the need to face my feelings about my death, my reactions to the end of and to grapple with a statement made to me a few years ago "You attract a lot of death". I did not react to that foot-in-the mouth remark but it bothers me internally. I do not agree with that insensitive comment. My parent know a lot of people and growing up, my brothers and I have lived and been educated in different countries further expanding our network (for example, I started school in the United Kingdom, finished school in the United States of America and the in-between years were spent at school in South Africa). We have such a huge network of connections - my brother lost a close friend to cancer in Hawaii and other friends in a bombing in Indonesia; my eldest brother as an Anglican minister has ministered and counselled parishioners facing death; I have no idea at the number of funerals he has conducted and I am not asking him that question.
I feel thing keenly and deeply; and am intuitive. On a hot summer's Wednesday afternoon in Ithaca I was at the house of a friend from school swimming and enjoying the sunshine - the family were the host family to an exchange student from South Africa and naturally we had palled up; the eldest son of the family was not at home. He was in the same grade (Grade 12) as us; we were all high school seniors and he would be going to France on a rotary exchange programme after we had graduated from high school. He and some friends had gone to spend the afternoon swimming at a reservoir in Ithaca; my South African friend had no gone with the group. So we were by the poolside at this family home, swimming, sunbathing and talking. The parents of another classmate from school arrived and soon left again with Mr & Mrs N (it was their house we were swimming at and where E was currently living) (I am using abbreviations as I have not asked permission for those who are pivotal to this story and so out of respect and discretion I am using abbreviations). We were told by J, the N's second son who was a junior at our high school that there had been an accident and they had to go to the hospital. Immediately I wanted to go home and as quickly as possible, I felt nauseous and dizzy. The desperate feeling of wanting to flee and race home was so intense. I am no runner but I had run most of the way home but had to stop en route to vomit. When I got home I told my Mom that there had been an accident and I knew it was bad. I did not know yet but my premonition was right - the eldest son, D had drowned in that reservoir that hot and humid Wednesday afternoon. There was a rope hanging from a tree, you swung out holding onto the rope to the water and dropped into the water - it was reported that D had swung out and somehow in the swinging back and forth hit his head on the tree, knocking himself out or concussing himself and then dropped into the water. Dead at the age of 18 when he had this amazing future before him. Such a personality, so intelligent, talented, a true all-rounder and a gentle funny soul, oh how I railed at the world, the unfairness of life, the cruelty, I wept until there were no more tears. I could not face the family but I had to and eventually went when they were sitting Shiva for D and I went to the funeral; I took the spade like all the mourners before me, using the spade to put soil on top of his coffin. His untimely death changed me; I was always so fearless and daring in water either in a pool or in the ocean, never again. And I know that his premature death awakened me to the fact that you can never take life or future plans for granted. Did it jade me and make me cynical? Honestly yes together with other life lessons have made me cautious about future events taking place; something of an oxymoron for someone who generally has an optimistic positive outlook on life but I am a realist too and pragmatic. Another digression and an entirely different topic one for a blog post!
Returning from the USA to Grahamstown in September 1983, one day I was shocked when walking down the High Street I was greeted by a painfully thin blonde girl who I did not immediately recognise. It was Roslyn who had been at school with in Grahamstown before leaving for the USA. She was a first year student now and I wanted to cry at the sight of her - stick thin arms and legs; and her shoes seemed too big for her feet. There was something Minnie Mouseish about her ankles and shoes. At home I told my Mom that I had seen Roslyn and it seemed that there was a lot of concern about her but it did not seem that much was being done and she was not as yet receiving treatment let alone any help. It was not long after encountering Roslyn and chatting to her that it was eventually decided by her family that she needed treatment. It was during the road trip all the way to Cape Town where it was hoped that she would receive the appropriate medical treatment that Roslyn sadly passed away; her heart simply stopped working. She weighed 38 kg at the time of her very tragic death - she was about 5.8 in height. I had known Roslyn for most of my life - she was quiet, introverted, very clever and was pushed to always achieve top academic results so she had few, if any, friends as she never wanted to go to movies, for example, opting to study instead. I do not know what had happened for her to develop an eating disorder resulting in anoxeric nervosa which caused her untimely death robbing sweet, shy and sensitive Roslyn at having a chance to live life. I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions from tears to rage and I thought my head would explore from all the questions for which there were no answers. It took me a very long time to be reconciled to the fact that events happen in life for which there are no reasons or answers to the myriad of questions.
Not many months after Roslyn's passing, I went with a group of friends to a disco at a hotel on the outskirts of Grahamstown. We were not there too long and I did not see a young guy who I knew; he saw me and told a friend that he had seen me and apparently he looked for me but I had left. When we left the hotel there was a massive motorbike parked at the entrance and I remarked "That's a killer bike". I cannot explain why I said that but I had this weird feeling and a great sense of unease which abated a tad when I was safely home. Sadly I would find out the following day that my words were a portend as that motorbike had resulted in the death of two guys late the previous night - I knew both of them, the pillion passenger was the guy who had seen me but I did not see him. It was a horrific accident and I was, with my group of friends, so devastated and when I heard that he had seen me and gone looking for me, and I had not seen him, I battled to breathe, I was overwhelmed by guilt and regret.
I was not even 21 years old and had already suffered so much loss of loved ones, young and older, somersaulted through the vortex of emotions which are part of the grief and mourning process and I would not be human if all the losses did not impact. I have the internal scars of loss, guilt and regret and through the pain I know I grew up and started working hard at making an positive impact so I would ultimately be remembered with love, delight and joy and not as an average, dull, negative and boring person.
During my marriage to Morgan and Tristan's Dad, there were a number of occasions when I found myself being held up at gunpoint. Their Dad had a hunting rifle and if something went a little awry with life, it became standard practice for him to lose it emotionally, mentally and the rifle would be pointed at me and in years to come, at Morgan and Tristan too. I would be an uncontrolled sobbing sodden mess begging forgiveness (though of course I had done nothing wrong) and pleading for him to put the rifle down. Through the years emotionally and mentally I grew stronger and the last time he held us up at gunpoint, with Tristan being 5 weeks old and in my arms, I lost my temper and yelled at the Dad of my sons to simply pull the trigger. I had had enough and was at the end of my tether and patience. That was a turning point and even though it took me another 7 years to change the lives of Morgan, Tristan and I, he never dared threaten us with his hunting rifle again. It is not surprising that I have an absolute hatred and fear of guns which are far too often in the hands of insecure bullies who because they are brandishing a gun have a false sense of bravado, a very dangerous combination.
A colleague many years later had to endure the very tragic death of her young son at the age of 3. He contracted meningitis and sadly he was not able to fight it. The most beautiful little blonde boy with these cherubic curls who Morgan, Tristan and I had been with a week before he died. He was the dearest little lad who did not like the story of the 3 little pigs because the wolf was scary and he did not like the wolf. When I told Morgan and Tristan that Daniel had died, Morgan remarked that he looked like an angel and so he had now gone to be an angel. His comment was so beautifully poignant I just cried more and held my sons so close .
I will continue this topic in Part II and will end this with an incredible poem about death which I found poignant (source https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-not-stand-at-my-grave-and-weep/)
