dit brand soos ‘n pyl in my.
Die mense sien daar niks nie van,
en die Here alleen die weet wat ek ly.
Die dae kom en die nagte gaan;
die skadu’s word lank en weer kort;
die drywerstem van my werk weerklink,
en ek gaan op my kruisweg vort.
I know at least seven women who have lost a child. I, myself, managed to lose someone else's child. "How do you do that?" I hear you ask. You take in a six-year old when his mother's life falls apart and you keep him until he reaches high school, after which the arrangement becomes permanent and one day you realise you've become a single step-parent to a teenager. When you divorce his father many years later, you also lose the only "child" you'd ever known. That is how you lose someone else's child.It was not until I found Buurman that the possibility of a human baby crossed my mind. The Bulldog puppy that my ex and I had purchased for progeny died at three months of age and we didn't "try again". He never wanted another child and neither did I want any of my own. I carried a deep-seated worry that, because my mother had given me away, I might not love my biological produce. What if it arrived and you didn't like it?, I would fret. A puppy seemed the safer option. In the end, it didn't safeguard us from loss.Nobody was more surprised than I was when I found in Buurman someone with whom I could see myself raising a child. We thought about it, talked about it and decided we love our freedom and independence too much, and we didn't want to be Old Parents. I had Old Parents, who died young, and left me behind alone. It was settled that we would get a kitten. Hexie happened and Buurman, who was "not really a cat person" got wrapped around her little finger. Sometime towards the end of last year and at fifty years of age, I was struck by a fierce maternal urge. It wasn't a want, but a need for tiny limbs to hold in my arms, something small to nurture, an object for the love I had in excess. It took weeks of persuasion to overcome Buurman's resistance, until one day I just came home with another cat. Hannes had been left at the local vet, homeless and scruffy.
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| Hannes at the vet, looking for a home. |
I fell in love with his photo on the Facebook appeal already. When they opened the cage and he started purring for his little life I was powerless. Hannes came home. That first night he settled himself onto Buurman's chest and fell asleep. Buurman's hairy, naked chest would remain his sleeping spot of choice. He would clamber up every night, suck on Buurman's beard, lick his nose, and nibble his fingers before nodding off. Later I would carry him (the cat, not Buurman) to his own fluffy blankie, like a child that fell asleep in front of the TV.Hannes was a delight. He fullfilled a lifelong yearning. His presence personified homeliness and belonging. No finger was safe, no toe, no shoelace escaped his attention, and he climbed a thorn tree and a human leg with equal skill - fine when you're wearing jeans; very eina when you're not. Hexie shared mothering duties from the start. This came as a surprise, because Hexie had no mother herself: she had been poisoned when Hexie was very small. But you wouldn't say so from looking at these two. Hexie washed Hannes and indulged him, teaching me a lesson about not needing to have had a mother yourself to care for a child.
Hexie gives Hannes a bath.
He returns the favour, sort of.
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| Thick as thieves, they were. |
I would come home from work at the guesthouse in the middle of the day just to lie with Hannes on my chest for a while. He liked to sleep on top of us or on top of Hexie. His energy was unending. He seemed turbo-charged by every frequent meal, and sometimes sleep would overtake him in a sunbeam on the kitchen floor next to the empty plate.
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| First time he tasted tuna |
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Perhaps I tempted fate by naming Hannes after my dead father. Yet I had another vivid dream of my dad being returned to me. In the dream my dad was not dead. He had only left long ago and decided to come back. He was an old man, and sickly, and rambling on as old people do, and I was overjoyed to have him back. Something so profound was restored in the dream that I tried desperately to stay asleep to cling to the feeling. There's no describing the joy of finding someone who'd been absent for 35 years. The other day I saw a Facebook friend who got a black kitten proclaim her kitten a "spirit guide". Uhm, no, New-Age lady, it's a cat. I'm not deluded enough to consider Hannes a messenger from the dead. He was just a kitten, whom I loved dearly and who restored long-missing parts of me in the context of the rest of my life going pretty well. When your sense of self is as fragile as mine, such restoration is pure gold. On the Sunday before Christmas we were about to leave for Cape Town when Buurman called me to say he suspected Hannes had been hurt by Enya, our newly adopted mixed-breed puppy. I found Hannes cowering behind the tumble drier. He was very, very hurt. Instead of a trip to Cinema Nouveau for my birthday I got a chase to the vet. As we sped along the gravel road the injured kitten convulsed in his carrier on the passenger seat. "Hannes!" I shouted. "Hannes! Moenie!! Jy kan nie doodgaan nie, ek is te lief vir jou! Asseblief Hannes!" He raised his little head with difficulty and seemed to focus. I felt desperate. The vet had said she was waiting at the clinic for another emergency and could see me after the other client. "I can be there first," I had answered, and I was. Hannes was in so much shock that his eyes were bulging. The vet administered subcutaneous fluids and a painkiller. Although he was limping badly, we could find no puncture wounds or broken bones. He stayed behind at the practice to be monitored for laboured breathing, which would signify internal bleeding. It was a fifty-first birthday filled with worry and tears.I was able to fetch him the next day. His breathing had settled. He was bruised badly and the vet warned he would appear drunk and unsteady for a while. The kitten that returned was not the kitten who had left the previous day. My once confident and hyperactive kitty was sedate and quiet, limping severely, and staggering about like he'd consumed a papsak all by himself. My heart shattered each time I looked at him. But the stagger got better and within the week he started to stalk Hexie again. His limp grew less acute and he became more animated, returned to his old self. My kitty was back and I couldn't be happier. Enya was another story, which warrants a blog of its own. Enya is no longer with us. Mauling a kitten is a dealbreaker, which does not mean it was easy to let Enya go.But I had my baby boy back. I promised him he would never have to live in fear of a dog again and our good-as-gold Pointer mix, Elsa, helped to restore the tiny feline's faith in gentle treatment from her canine cousins. Hannes started to explore outside the back door and went back to his job of adding joy to our lives. He helped us exercise, adding his 1.2kg weight where needed:
Hannes lived for ten days after the mauling. He recovered completely and was terrorising Hexie, stalking stray leaves and generally being cute as a button. I worked at the guesthouse on New Year's Day and came home for a kitten break late morning, but Hannes could not be found. We called and searched for the rest of the day. Inside the washing machine, the fridge, the dishwasher, and in cupboards we hadn't opened in months. He was not one to go walkabout and Buurman was certain he'd left him in the kitchen before driving to town earlier in the morning. By the afternoon I was veering between frantic and hopeless, my calls growing softer and tears and snot mixing on my face as we looked in bushes, down drains, and under covers of any kind. I shuffled the fridge away from the wall and Buurman helped with the freezer. He wasn't there. I had curled myself up around Hexie on our bed when Buurman found him under the oversized Oregon dresser in the kitchen. He was dead. I saw only his little white feet sticking out from under the enormous cupboard Buurman had heaved aside. I stumbled outside and screamed, a hoarse, low, ugly sound. I sobbed, "No, no, no!" over and over and over. His name tumbled round and round in my head. It felt asif my heart and my breathing had stopped - surely should have stopped - but I must have been mistaken, because I seem to be still here three days later. I sunk down onto a heap of thatching grass abandoned after Buurman had thatched our verandah roof and remembered that I said nothing when my mother died. The night of my mother's death I felt bad for crying at the table in the hotel diningroom, because it was in front of people. When my dad died on a cold, sunny afternoon, I did not cry either. It was only the day my husband and stepson walked out of my life that I sobbed, "Must I always be alone?" in the empty silence where I was left behind and decided this time, I would feel everything. I wake up every morning with Hannes's name on repeat in my mind and a desperate internal cry for the feeling of his tiny, nearly weightless body in my arms all day. I want to dig him out of the ground to hold his little body one more time. I want to kiss his little face. We decided not to have an autopsy done. Buurman buried Hannes in a Tarzan shoe box the next day. My baby lies in red soil outside our bedroom window, where I can see him every morning from our bed. His food bowls stand in our bedroom, the water drying up.
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| His absence is excruciating. |
We think it may have been a scorpion. A few nights before, Elsa had refused to sleep on her cushion. Elsa is a princess who once rejected a bed a spider had walked across. This recent night she sniffed the floor in agitation and I had to move away furniture and reposition her cushion before she would settle. We see scorpions outside regularly. Yesterday morning I found a baby bitey in the bath and since then we've been hunting at night with a UV torch to find the nest before we lose another family member. Hannes was kitten enough to play with anything that moved. That might have been his undoing.
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Less than 10mm in length.
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