My Parents' Retirement Plans

After Oupa retired he and Ma decided to sell their house and move to South Africa — it had long been my Dad's desire to spend his last days in his beloved Cape area in Oudtshoorn, his place of birth and childhood. All his remaining relatives lived there — so they sold the house to the Welenskys, who had a rather large family. They and we bonded to a small degree.

Then my folks got in touch with the Chandler family, who had moved to Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, asking permission to stay there a few days  before continuing their journey to his home-town. Mel and I had decided to take a vacation at Durban while they were moving. We hired a holiday flat in Durban and arrived there before  my Parents even left Pretoria. We had been there a few days when the phone rang. It was Ma calling to tell us that Dad had been struck by a car, and was in the hospital, very severely injured. When the accident occurred Ma was sitting in the car on the other side of the street, it was early evening when vision was at its worst,  someone tapped on the window and asked, "Was your husband just crossing the street?" She confirmed it saying, "He was trying to check to see if the street across the road was the one we were looking for." Then the man told her he was struck by a car and the ambulance was on the way. She managed to cross the street just as  they were loading him in and he groaned, but said no more. Ma followed them to the hospital. When she called us she told us it was pretty serious, and I, of course, burst into tears of sorrow. She asked to speak to Mel, and he told her we would leave as soon as it was daylight. Well, before we left the next morning she called again to say he had not survived the night.

We talked to the flat management and they said it was okay. We got to Pretoria later in the day and found the Chandler's house. They and Mel quickly made arrangements for the funeral and a burial spot in the cemetery. The young couple who ran into him were beside themselves with grief, and we actually ended up comforting them. The time of day made it very difficult to see and Dad obviously was not being very aware. The couple even attended the funeral. So this is the way Dad got his final desire to die in his home-country. The day after the funeral  Ma said, "I don't want to go back to Bulawayo yet — I'm not ready to face all our church friends."

We immediately invited her to come and spend the rest of our vacation with us. Mel called the apartment management to explain the situation, he was told the flat was still vacant and they would put in another bed for her. So we went back to Durban. Frikkie had come down for the funeral, by train, and drove Ma's car back to Bulawayo. We, with Ma, went back to our holiday flat and Ma found the time to get her emotions back in order. Ma was a woman who believed in the strongly-held British "Stiff upper lip" idea, but I caught her quietly crying when she thought no-one was around. Her 45+year marriage was tragically at an end. Of course,  she no longer had a home to go to, but the agreement we had with my parents was that if either one was left alone, a home with us was assured.

 One day, as we were going for a walk at the beach we had to cross a walkway over the water, to our destination. The walkway was made with wooden slats, about 3 cm apart. Paul, who was still under five years old, looked down and saw the sea-water swirling around under the slats, and became afraid that he would fall into the sea. My very practical Mom said, "Don't worry, the gaps are very small!" To which he very quickly responded, "Yes, but I am a very small boy!!" That delightful response was the very thing we needed to raise our feeling of well-being as we all laughed heartily.