ONCE WE WERE FOUR, NOW WE ARE TWO…I have only been able to write this because the floodgates have been opened by Derek Springer’s tribute to his mother. So Derek I do thank you. Perhaps I can move on a little now.My mother had her first three children practically in three and a half years. Christopher (Kitta) in October 1957, Roderick (Poddie) in November 1958 and me Gillian (Blossom- courtesy of my brothers!!) in January 1961. Fiona (otherwise known as Noni or Sos – short for sausage) was born in October 1965. Very much an afterthought. It seems to me that I shared two distinctly different childhoods, the one with the boys and the other with Noni. My brothers were and still are my yardstick by which I have measured any men that have passed through my life.All in all we had a different and either an idyllic or a very dysfunctional childhood depending on whose point of view you take. We kids were all born in different African countries. My dad was a bit of a gypsy when it came to work. Much of our early childhood he was either a soldier or a game ranger, but there were a whole host of other jobs in between. Noni was lucky enough to go to one junior and one high school in one town, (by then my Dad’s roving days were over) but the boys and I went through a run of schools. It made it difficult to put down roots and build friendships, so by and large we were more dependant on each other as siblings than a lot of siblings are. Our cousins all grew up together going to the same schools and universities etc and we were never part of that throng, the odd family occasion that we did manage to attend, it seemed we were always on the fringe. Anyway the years passed and we all went off to do our own thing, which for the three older ones seemed to be as multiple and varied as my fathers’ life. We never lived in each other’s pockets, but were always just a letter or phone call away if we needed to talk or chat about things that were happening in our lives. Poddie aged 17 left school to join the B.S.A.P. in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe at the height of the bush war there. He came back three years later a changed man with lasting psychological hurts and shrapnel slowly poisoning his system. My world changed forever and I grew up overnight when in May 1985, Kit was killed in a car accident in Botswana. Aged 27, married for the third time, with one child of his own and three stepchildren, he lived in Zimbabwe but was in Botswana on business. No one knows for sure what happened; he was found the next day thrown out of and pinned beneath his land rover, he had bled to death. My parents were torn apart and we three left behind had to assume a sort of mantle of adulthood for their sakes. My mother for some reason was adamant about us not going to the funeral in Zim. Just she and my dad went, something that I regret to this day as I truly feel that the rituals we go through when someone dies help us to move along. Six months after Kit’s death my cousin Peter was killed in almost the exact same circumstances as Kit. I alone from our family went to that service, (funny enough at the Church that I now regularly attend). I remember going up to Peter’s sister Anthea at the funeral service, and her breaking down in my arms and sobbing saying that she was so glad that I was there because I of all the cousins understood just what she was going through. You see in a very large family, Kit and Peter were the first of our generation to die. Peter’s service was in essence my goodbye to Kitta too.Life moved on Poddie had married, had two beautiful daughters, divorced married again and was living in Botswana running his own safari business. He was not the healthiest person, suffering almost annual recurrences of bilharzia and malaria. He and I had a very special bond, we were all a family of bookworms, but Poddie and I shared a love of poetry. The first time we went overseas to the UK, it was Pod, his first wife and I. We hitch hiked through England and Scotland, and Ann would get very frustrated because Pod and I would walk along quoting our favorite poems to each other, the ones we knew verbatim like Xanadu & Sea fever & the Solitary Reaper etc. etc. He and I both loved Wordsworth. We spent time in the Lake District etc. visiting places that Wordsworth had lived and worked in.My parents retired to Durban where my sister and I live in 1993. Me being single we moved in together. My mother has rheumatoid arthritis and being trained as a nurse it has meant I can keep an eye on her. Then started a period which we have dubbed the extended “annus horribilus” in our family. In April 1999, my father had a six-graft coronary bypass operation. Subsequently and possibly during the operation itself which is not uncommon I am now told he has had several small strokes. Nothing major, but they have affected his memory and his personality. In April 2000 Pod, recovering from a bout of yellow jaundice was involved in an accident where his legs were burnt very severely. He spent about three weeks in hospital. On 28 July (two years today!!) my sister gave birth to a little girl Erin Sian. Ten days later on the 8 August she was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis and hospitalized for total bed rest. The mantle fell to my mother and I to take care of Erin for her. The day after she was diagnosed I had a terrible fall, and sprained my left wrist and arm and ripped all the tendons in my left foot. All I could do was bandage / strap the foot and go on, as my sister and baby needed me. My mother would look after Erin during the day, I would fetch her after work and take her back to their house to cook supper for my brother in law. A month later my mother had a massive heart attack. She was rushed into theatre for a bypass operation, which failed, as her veins could not be harvested for transplant because they had been weakened by excessive cortisone treatment. The result is that she has been left with massive residual heart damage and unstable angina. Every day that she is alive is a blessing. When we phoned Pod to tell him what had happened, he came down to Durban on the first available flight from Botswana. He told us he was so scared he wouldn’t see my Mum again. He spent a week with us and apart from my Mum being in hospital it was just like old times. He was overjoyed to spend time with all of us, but more especially he was so taken with little Erin and glad that he had got to see her.On the 5 October Pod was rushed into hospital for an emergency appendicectomy. It was a Sunday and the next day was a public holiday in Botswana. So a doctor did not see him for 48 hours post operation. By the time that he was seen, he had haemorrhaged and peritonitis and septicaemia had set in. We nearly lost him several times and he was in and out of theatre ten times in all. He was eventually moved to a private hospital in Gaberone in Botswana. His surgeon battled for almost two months to save him. The fact that his body was riddled with shrapnel from the war twenty years before didn't help. Eventually he thought he had won the battle and took Poddie back to theatre on 24 November to finally close him up. We don’t know for sure what happened, as my sister in law did not want an autopsy, but we surmise he had a stroke under the final anaesthetic. My sister and I spoke to him on the Sunday and he was incoherent and rambling. He lapsed into a coma on the Tuesday and died at 12 noon on Thursday 30 November. (He had celebrated his 42nd birthday in hospital on the 1st of that same month.) Again no one was with him when he died. This because my sister in law had not informed us of his lapsing into a coma on the Tuesday. I am still battling to forgive her for this. His family should have been with him. He died alone.I was devastated! He was my soul mate, and I felt and still feel as if a part of me died with him. Little did we know how prophetic his words were that he was scared he might not see my Mum again. Last year in the midst of us all still trying to come to terms with what had happened to us, my brother in law walked out on my sister and then ten-month-old Erin for a little 19 year old. He had been unemployed for a few months & obviously could not take the pressure of being in a family that had been through so much. His leaving tore this whole family apart again.20 Months down the line we are just beginning to “live” again, but life will never ever be the same. I miss both my boys every single day of my life and know the reality that although my life will go on and new things and people will happen to me, we will never forget the pain, at best we will just learn to cope and deal with it.Our Poddie wasn’t religious in the normal sense of the word, so a Church service seemed out of place. Twelve days after he died, we held a wake at our house for him. At exactly the same time and on the same day, friends of his in Botswana and in the Kruger National Park where he had worked as a tour guide for many years, also held wakes for him. I stood up and spoke about him on behalf of my parents, it took more courage than I thought I possessed, but someone had to do it. Only one of my many cousins was there with all the other family & friends, my cousin Anthea, she felt she in turn could now come to me and say that she related to what I was going through. Very good friends of Pod's put an obit. in the paper which read. "In fondest memories of Rod Stokes, South Africa's very own Crocodile Dundee, a true son of the bush. The next time we are on the delta, we will have a G & T for you, Hamba Kahle (go safely)".
Let this coming of age story of a boy named Bean take you back to a simple time. Set in a small southern town in the 1960's, encircled by a river and gleaming white cotton fields.
A wicked Cajun Fairy named Robes Pierre entered the impenetrable Magical doll land of Sha Bebe. Queen Faustina, the ruler of the doll land, thought she had destroyed him, but he's back! Will the doll land survive his evil ways?
