Читать книгу The Lyndi Tree - JA Ginn Fourie - Страница 7

“I wonder why Lyndi’s not answering the phone?” My husband has been pressing the recall button all morning,

“It’s already eleven o’clock, and I’ve been trying since eight.”

I tell myself that he is worrying unnecessarily, but then he is very protective of his family. He often phones to check if I have arrived at work safely. I have to drive along the N2 Highway, and there have been several incidents of bricks hurled from fly-over bridges onto the cars below. The subsequently smashed windscreens and head injuries are a testimony to the disillusionment and anger of some residents of Khayelitsha - a sprawling informal suburb of Cape Town on both sides of the highway.

“She may have had a late-night and pulled the phone plug out at the wall,” I reply.

“Or she may already be on her way to help Carmen.”

Lyndi has been living in a flat in Cape Town with two other students while reading for a Civil Engineering degree. Her friend, Carmen is moving to a new house today.

To allay my apprehension, I remind myself of an incident of a few months before. Lyndi had returned to Cape Town on a Sunday afternoon. My husband had been away on business, and I had requested a promise; that she gives us, her brother Anthony and me, a scotch-buzz – allowing the phone to ring; then hang up, when she got there,

“If we don’t hear the ring within an hour we will come looking for you”. Half an hour passes; then an hour. We phone her flat, but there’s no reply. Anthony suggests we wait another half an hour and then set out to look for her. When we still haven’t heard, he gets behind the wheel and, defying the speed limit, races the forty kilometres to town. Throughout the journey, Ant scans his side of the highway, and I study mine. Praying that we won’t see the red bakkie - pick up truck, lying in a ditch, or surrounded by angry stone-throwers.

We arrive at her apartment block in the record time of 15 minutes and find her walking out of the lift. Before we can say a word, she bursts into tears, explaining that a next-door neighbour had locked himself out of his flat. She’s been so busy helping him to get hold of a master key, which is not easy on a Sunday afternoon, she completely forgot about the scotch-ring. She is sorry to have put us through anxiety and a needless trip to Cape Town. We, in turn are so relieved that we can forgive her anything. We go upstairs with her and have a drink, then drive home at the legal speed, taking the proper half an hour.

“Love, I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”

Despite my reassurances to my husband, I, too, am getting worried. Especially when Carmen phones to find out if Lyndi is with us because she has not yet turned up to help. I tell myself that soon I will hear that cheery voice,

“Howdy Mooks, What ‘tja doin’?”

Why panic? All will be well. It always is. No sense in stressing myself unnecessarily.

The evening before Lyndi had packed a basketful of presents for her friends in Cape Town. Her friend Quentin had arrived from Johannesburg in the afternoon, and they’d set off in her father’s bakkie so that they could help Carmen move. Tonight, they are planning to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

“Fireworks on the beach at Sea Point – what could be more fun?” She had called as she whooped down the stairs and out of sight. I can’t help feeling uneasy. She’d mentioned that Dave, her flat-mate, could make the fireworks in his laboratory. I conjure up images of an accident; someone losing an eye or burning an arm, but stifle my dark thoughts. I don’t want to put a damper on her enthusiasm. After all it is to be the first day of the year 1994, the year of the first ‘free and fair democratic elections’ in South Africa, scheduled for April 27 - a moment in history, a year to celebrate the end of apartheid.

Now I am equally determined not to let my imagination run away with me. We are planning a Winelands tour with friends Billy and Madeleine. With Christmas over and a long lazy summer day stretching ahead, I am determined to enjoy myself. But I can’t get rid of the niggling doubts, a cloud hanging over me. I keep telling myself that I must pack a picnic basket, but somehow the energy and inspiration is missing. I pick up the bread-knife to make sandwiches. It feels heavy as a stone. I can’t decide which bread to use and put the knife down. I mean to boil some potatoes and eggs for salad, but the pot seems unusually bulky. It all seems like too much effort.

We greet Billy and Madeleine with the usual compliments of the season, I feel detached and try to connect. Madeleine, looking like a porcelain doll with her curly shoulder-length hair and cotton dress. Billy cracking his usual jokes and although I laugh, I know it sounds hollow and insincere. As we seat ourselves in the car with the men sitting in front and ladies in the back, I am aware of more heaviness and almost start to cry. I’ve been looking forward to this visit from long-standing friends, and we have a lot to catch up on, I can’t seem to feel any enthusiasm or life – no connection. Madeleine has been depressed for the past few months and I wonder; am I picking up on something in her?

“Tell me about Lyndi and Ant,” Madeleine says as she settles in. “Stella missed Lyndi so much at Christmas and is dying to get back down here as soon as she can.”

Stella has been Lyndi’s best friend for 13 years. At the mention of my daughters’ name, my heart skips a beat. I’ve managed to banish her from my thoughts for the past few seconds.

As the day drags on, I find it challenging to engage in conversation. We talk about our friendship; we’d been neighbours for many years, and what the futures of our children might hold. Lyndi is interested in going to Alaska to do her first work assignment.

“To travel and to find my self, my ‘true identity’ in the big world,” she’d said with a grin, watching for our reaction.

The silences in the car are uncomfortable. I wonder whether it’s because we have been apart for a while or whether it’s me. I’ve always felt so at ease with Madeleine in the past, what is happening now?

Around four o’clock, as we draw near home, we pass our young friends Ray and Marianne. They wave, but somehow look awkward. The heat is oppressive. At Aster Street, I notice a car parked outside our driveway. As we draw closer my husband recognises Delyse and Diantha. I wonder why they are waiting without letting us know beforehand that they are planning to visit.

We enter the driveway and Ray draws up behind us. He comes towards us with an envelope in his hand,

“It’s a bit late for a Christmas card,” I quip. “But lovely to see you all the same.”

Their extended family are going to have lunch with us the next day,

“Ginn, you don’t know, do you?” Ray says.

By this time Delyse and Diantha have joined us. Delyse suggests we go upstairs so I can sit down,

“Dee don’t mess with me – its Lyndi isn’t it? She must be dead, or you would be rushing us to a hospital.”

I suddenly realise what I’d sensed all day; there is something desperately wrong, and the shock of this intuitive moment takes my breath away. I hear myself saying as if from a distance, “I don’t think I can deal with this. What’s happened to her?”

“There was an attack at the Heidelberg Tavern in Observatory last night” Delyse answers. “They say Lyndi died with three others. The police have been trying to trace you, and there’s a message from them on your answering machine.”

I feel numb as I drag myself up the stairs. Surreal… it’s as if I am outside of my body watching it all happen. My husband goes straight to the telephone and hits the ‘play messages’ button. On the outside, he appears calm; able to handle the news. Perhaps he feels as numb as I do? My thoughts are confused, tumbling in chaos, no match for the numbness. Was the activist Lyndi part of the attack? Wait for the story! I tell myself. I find it difficult to respond to anything with more than a nod.

There is an American woman’s voice on the recording. I wonder why they’d use an American – I’d imagined a burly Afrikaner polisieman - a policeman. She is telling us something to the effect that the police have been trying to contact us. That, unfortunately, it is thought that our daughter Lyndi has died and that we should go to the morgue in Observatory as soon as possible to identify her body.

I don’t remember the exact words, not that it matters, I am trying to grapple… to grasp how this last ten minutes is going to affect my life. How can I live without her? For twenty-three years and twenty-eight days, plus a further nine months, she has been part of my life, my body and my dreams.

Ray offers to drive us to Observatory, and Billy takes the seat beside him, leaving the back seat for my husband and me. Delyse handles the telephone which is already ringing incessantly with Madeleine and Diantha at her side for back-up. The news is filtering through the grapevine, and it seems that everyone wants to know what happened? The family are already making arrangements to fly to Cape Town to be with us (mobile phones are a rarity at this point).

I sit with my head on my husband’s shoulder, holding his hand. Although I am aware of the speed at which everything is happening around me, I am frozen, unable to participate. My heart and mind are in one place only, the m-o-r-g-u-e. Flashes of the television show ‘Law and Order’ flip into my consciousness. Will we be taken to a locker, have the door opened, the drawer pulled out with a ticket tied to her toe? Maybe there is a mistake. Maybe she went off for the day to be on her own to gather her wits. Maybe ... maybe… maybe… Stop! I shout silently to myself - Stop. None of this grasping at straws will help. Face the possibility. Perhaps this has happened. And, oh God if it’s true...

I start to feel a dull ache developing in the centre of my chest. I spend time later marvelling that the Ancients had called the heart the ‘seat of emotions’. Right now, it is as if I have a heavyweight on my chest and nothing is strong enough to lift it.

I’m finding it difficult to breathe, and my heart is thumping in my ears like the electric light generator at our childhood farm.

By now we are sitting in the morgue, the only attendant is very busy and suggests that we sit on the hard plank bench provided; no backrest; wait your turn. It is close to six o’clock. We have nothing to say to each other. The silence is burning into my brain. I want to see her. I want to take her home one last time to sleep in her bed, to snuggle up with her. I think of the many times I have dressed for tennis on a Sunday morning early. The rest of the family still fast asleep, I tiptoe to each of their bedrooms, watch their even, rhythmical breathing and thank the heavens that they are safe and at home where I can touch them; hold them; hug them; enjoy them for as long as they are under our roof. With their feet under our table, they are safe.

The minutes tick by into what feels like a grim eternity. At last, around seven-thirty, it is our turn. The waiting over, we are directed to a room with a glass window. Behind it lies my beautiful child on her left side with her torso twisted, probably the way that she fell on the Tavern floor. Those long elegant legs are slightly bent, her right shoulder touching the cold grey slab with her arm bent inwards so that her watch glass has shattered. Time has stopped and later when we retrieve her belongings, the hands are stuck at ten past twelve. Her watch on the right arm? She must have wanted to remind herself about something. The leather plait is there around her left ankle, and the sandals that we had bought at the Grahamstown Art Festival are still on those precious feet - they have taken her wherever she wanted to go. Her denim imitation patch shorts are saturated with dark red blood and her simple short-sleeved navy cotton jumper is hanging loose and relaxed with dark blotches all over it. Her brown hair is tied back in a loose French plait, her profile visible without moving the gurney. Casual strands of brown hair frame her still serene face with its up-turned nose - sleeping peacefully. Soon I’ll wake up, and this will all have been a nightmare. Oh God, let this end. I can’t stand any more.

Yes, there is no denial now. That is my girl, and I need to touch her, to hold her,

“No!” says the attendant “that is not allowed.”

I want to protest, to insist, to scream. I want to push the official out of the way; anything, anything to touch and hold my child. Then I see my husband’s body shaking, sobbing, sobbing quietly and I repent in silence.

Ray takes us to Lyndi’s flat to fetch the bakkie, then Ray and I return home. My husband and Billy visit Dave and Quentin in Groote Schuur Hospital. They fill in the details of the unfolding picture. Her flatmates Dave and Bernie accompanied by Lyndi and Quentin had taken Bernie’s sister, Olivia, to the train station to chug home to Port Elizabeth on holiday. Then they decided to show Quentin their favourite haunt – The Heidelberg Tavern. Now Bernie lies in the morgue with Lyndi. Dave and Quentin lie in the hospital fighting to stay alive; Dave with half of his stomach and a kidney gone, and Quentin paralysed from his waist down to his toes. Into what a raw deal their fifteen minutes at the Heidelberg turned. All Lyndi had hoped to do was to show Quentin the place where university friends gather to enjoy the diversity of races; where the sign “Whites only” has long disappeared; where Black singers, musicians and patrons are welcomed by proprietor and patrons alike. A victim of the activism she espouses, not a protagonist as I had first imagined.

Quetin on the Heidelberg Tavern floor

Quentin had met Lyndi the year before in Gauteng where they had struck up a kinship that had resulted in many long telephone hours and much laughter. He’d soon begun to use Ants’ pet-name for Lyndi which is ‘Sweetness’. In his pain and disorientation, he keeps asking for Sweetness. When the full reality of what has happened hits him, Quentin goes silent. The loss of functional lower limbs and such a ‘sweetness’ are, he later tells me, sometimes too much to bear. In those first tortured weeks of phantom pain and loneliness, he wishes that he had died with Lyndi.

I hear 18 years later, that his wish did become dear Quentins’ reality last year; may he relax in peace with Lyndi.

Ray and I get back home to find that my eldest brother Ian has already arrived from Johannesburg, sleeping arrangements and collections at the airport arranged by our efficient friends on the telephone. We confirm the news that it is Lyndi who has died and there seems very little else to say. I go to my bedroom and en-suite bathroom, shutting the doors so that I can howl with anguish and raw sorrow in privacy. I keep flushing the toilet to conceal my screams of grief and pain.

My husband drags a mattress into our room for Ant to sleep on; it is unnecessary as we lie there hugging each other.

“Oh God this is too awful …” “I can’t live without Sweetness …” “At least we still have each other …” “Oh, God … Oh, God … Oh, God …”

There is very little sleep to be had that night as we toss and turn, groaning and crying intermittently.

Saturday is marked with the arrival of flowers, cards, telephone calls, and of course, family arriving from all over South Africa. Criminal Investigation Officers spend many hours with my husband. I am not able to deal with their questioning and prying details. The media arrives with cameras and notebooks wanting pictures of Lyndi to piece together the story for South Africa and the world. Lyndi’s friends come in groups to commiserate. Embracing the taller men, I can hear their heartbeat. Oh, if only I could listen to Lyndi’s heart beating. The thought triggers another flood of tears. Fortunately, we are all sobbing so much that my pain is not the focus of attention. It doesn’t seem to matter that we howl and howl. I am comforted to know that she is treasured and loved by each one. Even the stoics can articulate something that they appreciate about her. Food arrives from out of nowhere, and everyone seems to be fed and cared for without my interest or concern for them. My mind seems to focus on one thing only – the pain of my loss, and my precious child lying still, too still, on the cold grey gurney.

By Sunday evening, my parents and all four brothers have arrived, as well as my husband’s mother and two brothers. There is a sense of merriment and celebration with jokes and stories, jesting and wit. It is the way my family have always dealt with being together, but now it seems to trivialise my agony. I feel so irritated by the laughter and jostling that I stay in my bedroom much of the time. Ian, my eldest brother, who is to take the service, calls us together to plan the funeral for the next day. He suggests that we participate as much as we feel able to. To break-down would be natural, Ian says, and we should not fear it but feel safe with support and love embracing us; in so doing, we will find healing and acceptance. What a grim way to spend our wedding anniversary! My husband wants to share the Life sketch, Ant feels comfortable ‘thanking their young friends’ for being present, and I want to pray.

This night I spend screaming at God for the loss of my child. Sitting in the bathroom with the doors closed and flushing now and then to muffle the sound, I cry and howl some more. Why did she have to die? And in such a cruel way!Did she know or have any inkling of what was happening to her? According to the news reports, she died before any help was available, but we do not have enough detail, only the fact that at the morgue her body seemed to be in the position in which it fell on the impact of the bullets. That, at least, is a consolation. All night I struggle with the prayer for the next day.

Monday morning 3 January 1994 eventually dawns, and, with extreme weariness, I drag myself to the kitchen to find some tea. I have not eaten anything since receiving the news two days ago and am now feeling the effect of virtually no sleep and no food. I have little strength or energy to face the day, a day of colossal activity; living on adrenaline and cortisol is par for the course. We take Lyndi’s favourite patchwork dress along with a satin pillow she had made herself, to the mortician. We also provide a single rose by the name of Peace which her Granny Fourie has asked to have put in the casket with her. We select a plain pine casket with rope handles. Because they don’t have one in stock long enough for her five-foot eight-inch body they have to send out for one; I suddenly know how amused she would have been; that her height in death, as it so often had been in life – in selecting clothes and boyfriends – would be a snag.

I ask to have an open casket because I have not been allowed to touch her or to say good-bye. Her make-up is crucial because she would want to look natural and her lips may be blue. Oh, the thoughts that keep bombarding my sluggish mind. I can’t stop crying. There is a tight searing pain in my chest as though my heart is tired and will maybe stop beating at any minute. What a relief that would be. Just to be unconscious of what is happening around me; to escape the dreadful pain and loss.

My husband requests large bouquets tied to the gum trees lining the avenue up the hill towards Helderberg College where the Church service and burial will take place. So, we spend all of the rest of the morning collecting the hydrangeas and agapanthus and make twelve large bouquets tied with blue and white ribbon around the sturdy gum trees. Blue is her favourite colour. Lyndi’s friend, Lesley, from Bethlehem, helps us, and her husband drives their bakkie to each tree. As we tie them in place my thoughts reel back to the 1960s when my husband and I had been students at Helderberg College.

A fellow student from Angola had died, falling from the farm truck going down this very same hill. I wonder how his mother had felt on getting the news. Living so far away, she would not have been able to attend her boy’s funeral. How had she survived her grief? The distraction brings momentary relief, but then a sense of sadness for the whole of humanity envelopes me, a dark dark cloud. I feel as though I could easily suffocate, my life force crushed, my heart wrung dry from the tears which continue to flow down my cheeks - wetting my shirt and breasts.

Eventually, it is time to leave the house for the funeral. We want to be early enough to spend some time with Lyndi before the service. When we arrive at the church it is already filling, and we help to carry the casket with its precious cargo in from the hearse. I help take the lid off. There she lies in pure and silent beauty, her lengthy hair half-covering the satin pillow. Her eyes closed as in a deep sleep, her arms relaxed with the right hand holding the rose to her chest. She looks so restful with a slight grin playing around the corners of her mouth, as though amused at our attempts to be gracious. All I want to do is dive in there with her and pull the lid down tight, tight, tight. Dear God, how will I survive without her laughter to remind me of the humour in most things?

I kiss her forehead and stroke her hair for what seems like hours, smiling and talking to her. I experience a sense of tingling excitement which I can not explain. I do know that it keeps me from crying throughout the afternoon. It is as if there are no more tears or even a reason to shed them. She is safer now than she has ever been while we looked after her as a young child. And yet… oh how I will miss her cheerful voice, her love and consideration of our needs and care for both herself and her brother.

My husband beckons me to take a seat next to him and Ant. The time has come to close the casket and say goodbye one more time,

“Bye, my precious angel. I’ll see you in good time when we rise to meet Him in the air.” And then,

“Schleep like a babe ‘til then.” These are the words she’d use when we said goodnight. “Schleep like a babe Mooksa,” she’d say concluding our telephone call.

Lyndi in Botswana

Ian tells of the times Lyndi had joined them to build a church in Botswana or spend a weekend together. Once she had popped in en-route to borrow money for a friend, she had paid it back promptly. He suggested that violence only begets more violence and that the most appropriate Christian response to this violent death is to absorb it, just as Lyndi’s soft body has absorbed the bullets on that fateful day, four days previously. What does absorbing grief mean? As the question flashes through my mind, I dismiss it immediately with Scarlet O’Hara’s,

‘I’ll think about that tomorrow when I can stand it’.

My husband and Ant stand at the podium with arms around each other while they thank everyone for coming to honour our child and sister. My husband gives a moving life sketch – She was a little charmer from the word go… always busy making her surroundings beautiful, a happy and a better place to be. He adds a note in Afrikaans from her first teacher who has heard the news,

Ek onthou so goed daardie flikker in die bruin oogies asook die glimlag’ – vertel Petro Theron van Marquard – ‘I remember the flicker in those brown, smiling eyes so well’ tells Petro from Marquard – That’s what I will miss he continues. Ant holds his hand as he fights for control - pain written all over his face. Then it is Ants turn to thank the young ones for their presence and love that sustains us in his enormous grief. We stand around the casket, family and friends with our arms around each other. Now it’s my turn. Will my voice hold? Without a quivery voice or even a tear, in an even and controlled rhythm, it all pours out.

Gracious Father

You gave your only Son

to bring healing for every soul on earth

Thank you for our only daughter

May healing come through her death

to each person she touched - especially those who murdered her

Mary, Mother of God our children, died at the hands of evil men

Lyndi had no choice, no time

But your son said it for her:

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”

We gave her bed and board and some love

You gave her forgiveness and a love that was:

honest,

pure,

selfless,

colour and gender-free.

Dear God she taught me well of you

able to listen,

ready to hear.

That was her life that you gave her

Her death was swift and painless, thank goodness.

My heart is broken

The hole is bottomless

it will not end

But you know all about it.

Thank you for the arms,

the lips,

the heartbeats

of family and friends to carry us.

I trust you with my precious Lyndi

This planet is a dangerous place to live

I know that you will come soon to fetch us

I wish it were today

But I will wait for your time.

The organ sounds the postlude as the pallbearers gather around the casket to carry Lyndi to the cemetery, a young black friend leading the parade. Taking turns - down the hill and over the dam wall, we walk the long stretch of road. The rope handles chaffing, but nothing is too much trouble to bear our precious child to her resting place. Beside us the sloped vineyard bakes in the summer sunshine and beyond, the wall of the Helderberg Mountains rise as if to protect us.

Carrying Lyndi’s casket to the cemetery

Thoughts flood my every step; like Sunday morning tennis and driving on this same road in the opposite direction; I’d been awash with the happiness and contentment that Ant and Lyndi were home and asleep, or sometimes Lyndi had made a foursome with the grups - grown-ups. Her tennis like her life was a steady, consistent playing of the ball. My mind is grappling with what it will be like to never speak to her again, never hear that laughter or feel her arms twined around me, in a long embrace. No more looking into those bright brown eyes, thanking God for her safety and health. The thought of her perfect teeth comes to me, each one a pearl that has never needed a filling or bracing. Now she doesn’t need them any longer so what does it matter. At that moment, the futility of life seems overwhelming - nihilism beckons with a gnarled finger. I resist knowing that this darkness must pass. But, in the days and weeks to follow I have to deal with the impulses to phone, to share something unique or call in at her flat with a treat,

“Let’s take in a movie Mooksa” or “Let’s go a-shoppin’” and the dreams that are so real – the nightmare is in waking up. Perhaps it is all meaningless?

Then on special occasions like her birthday when her chair is empty or at the time of her friends’ weddings when I feel devastated that we hosted a funeral instead of a wedding! I read a cameo written by a dear friend capturing the essence of that day and meaning returns with a flourish:

Uncle Billy Mason, Ginn and Ian

It was Monday, January 3 of the new year – the year of the vote, the year of hope. Yet the dawn did not celebrate this new morn - it dragged its rays behind it, behind the Helderberg – while white and grey clouds moved silently, determinedly over the puffy eye’d sky. Would it actually rain?

But then, for a flickering instant, I remembered hope …. And the rain? Well, it stayed away. For this was Lyndi’s day … And this is my point of view.

Ian stood at the open door, shaking hands, welcoming people – an invitation to a tragedy. Opposite was Stella, skitterende - sparkling Stella, eyes red, sparkling not now, wearing a tender smile, handing out bulletins – handing out proudly the memory of her best friend – and with it, she handed me comfort.

Johann, you were the next I saw. There were the pews, a mass of faces – but that was a blurry view – you and your grief were clear to me. An embrace, all words lost when the plain pine casket I saw, reality staring me in the face. A slap, a bolt from the blue --- and then Ant Babes, I saw you in the front pew. Heel-toe - heel-toe; walking a difficult thing to do, your hand pointing to a seat next to you. “We’ll see her again,” you consoled. And I loved you.

Then there was the queue –waiting suddenly easy to do – I wanted an obscured view. Reluctantly joining the line to confront reality, the inevitable truth of this life dawned on me – for Lyndi lay at rest before me, but life in her was no more ….

Mint green Ginn, fresh as morning dew, was the colour you chose, guarding your child and friend for this last time. You greeted people with individual kindness, almost smile, whilst a broken rhythm beat a bottomless hole in your heart. An embrace, words of cheer to still my restless soul – the grace of God making you whole.

How well Stella remembered Lyndi, how well was her recall, her friend, 13 years true, belonging not only to her but to all. Love thus shared is unconditional, divine. Still, others spoke, some read lines, many more would bring homage to the precious influence of a daughter of our time.

Grace, eternally amazing, a congregational anthem raised, sounds sweetly sad, old but still new, humbling once lost souls. How well I then believed.

Your prayer Ginn, intensely personal which you shared, revealed your relationship with your Heavenly Father, your love for Lyndi, your compassion for the world and hope for us all. Thank you.

Sketching Lyndi’s life Johann, you bravely unleashed words from deep within your heart. Your honesty touched me, Ant was there holding you, and you were brave. Ant, blonde, pony-tailed youth, more at home riding the crest of a wave, crestfallen now, spirit wise in grief, Thank you both.

“Lyndi’s death was not the will of God!” Ian declared, unstopping ears with a repeat. His talk was personal, complete, no-frills to absorb the heat - only us. A celebration of a life, not a list of sorrow … the promised salvation, the return of the Lamb – uplifting, encouraging – hold on, go on, despite the fall, hope resting in the soul. It was then that I caught the beat, almost annoyed, my growing despair spoiled. God it seemed is quite misunderstood.

To the gravesite we walked, hundreds of souls, media attention fanning the college street. Pall-bearers changed hands under a blue and white blanketed sky as leather-peaked, and briskly you strode Ginn, to join the shared weight of the coffin of your resting child. It was then I smiled.

Once again, Ian spoke, this time in nature’s scene, looking forward to the end of time – the advent of our Lord – the reunion of souls, of bodies made new. He clearly saw Lyndi in the queue, a little ahead of you all.

And hope new filled my soul, as you, Johann and Ant (and others) using spades, heaped soil into the open grave. For this is but Lyndi’s temporary stay, a quiet wait for her gentle soul, awakening to the sound of the last trumpet call …

With sadness in my heart, but in eternal hope.

Patricia Bonthuys 1994