Six people in my circle died this month, one of them a very close friend — the father of my Godchildren.
He was 59 and in rude good health. He cycled and swam and climbed mountains and hiked and canoed and ate healthily. He was thin.
He didn’t smoke, or drink too much. His life was considered, moderate and lean; devoid of excess. He should have lived to a ripe old age. In the end, none of it mattered.
He had a massive heart attack and died. It’s genetic, an old family friend gently shrugged. Nothing to do with health or happiness or lifestyle or personal choices.
My godchildren, aged 18 and 21, are devastated. As am I. We’re all reeling with shock. There were no warning signs, no indication that death was imminent. Of course, all death comes as a shock to the system. Even when someone is old or sick, news of death brings on palpitations. It’s the finality of it. The end.
My dad died in October 1994. He rose on that hot summer morning and ate breakfast with my mother — porridge with milk and sugar followed by a cup of tea — before getting into his ancient golden Mercedes to drive to the municipality to stand in the queue to pay his utilities bill.
When he got home he relayed snippets of gossip and news he’d gleaned while standing in line to my mother: who was getting married, news from children in the cities, deaths.
It was a decade since my father had reigned as headmaster of Ladysmith’s Windsor Indian High School. Despite the lapse in time, despite a regime change and a new order at the school, people still called my lovely dad “sir” and stopped him for advice about their children, or to ask him to speak at a wedding, or help them fill out a difficult form.
He was much loved. Going shopping with him was a slow affair, like moving through the streets with a celebrity or, more like, a guru with people wanting answers to (sometimes impossible) questions.
My lovely dad was never sharp or hurried or rude. It drove my mother crazy.
The day he died, he had an afternoon nap, ate a light supper with my mum, lay on his bed, had a massive heart attack and died. He was 72.
I was in Namibia, about to embark on a desert safari. I can’t remember who called to tell me my dad was dead. I find it strange that I can’t remember such an important detail of the telling. I remember feeling numb, and restless and helpless as I waited hours and hours at Windhoek airport to catch a flight back to Johannesburg from where I would drive another four hours home to Ladysmith.
Getting this terrible news alone, away from friends and my family, felt like a punishment. It would take an entire day before I could be among grieving people. While I waited in airports and in taxis I felt the urge to scream my pain to everyone: my lovely dad is dead, how can you be so normal? Do you not know that my life is altered forever?
Five years later my mother died. She was having her customary morning bath when she had her heart attack. Again I was far from home. When she died, at 7 o’clock in the morning, I was in a plane half way between Johannesburg and New York.
Another wait … an entire day of waiting at JFK to catch the night flight home. A day of despair, of disembodiment, of fear. What if I got lost? Who would come look for me now that my mother was dead? I was an orphan. The visceral connection between humans and mothers, the women whose bodies they come through, is a tough one to break. It’s hard to lose a parent; it’s heartbreakingly painful to lose a mother.
And now.
Six deaths in January? It’s unsettling. Suddenly death has moved into the realm of the possible.
Solid objects seem to have lost their sharp edges, their outlines now fuzzy, indistinct. People’s voices sound thin, reedy, echo-ey, without the requisite resonant timbre. Clarity has morphed into blurriness.
Someone explained it as form of self-preservation, cutting oneself off from having to think too deeply about the gargantuan subject of death and dying.
The meaning of life. The purpose of life. The afterlife. The randomness of life. These questions segue easily into the territory of the meaning of everything, the why of everything.
Appropriate for this month, as the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture resumes hearing testimony, is the big question: why are people corrupt? Is everyone corruptible?
A global corruption survey (conducted by Berlin’s The Transparency International Index) in which 180 countries were assessed, SA placed 75th.
Somalia is most corrupt. Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, the DRC, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi … the corrupt country list goes on and on.
January has been the month in which former Bosasa executive Angelo Agrizzi spent nine days exposing startling levels of bribery and corruption in our government and media.
It makes me want to stay in that death-induced blurriness that is my world right now.
Lots of death in one month shows us how fleeting life is. It hints at the urgency of the need to put an end to corruption. If we, during our lifetime, want to see our corruption levels brought down to, say, those in Denmark (least corrupt country in the world, apparently) we need to start identifying the markers now, understand the psychology behind corruption. Then, we need to put in place measures to help people make better choices.
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