Barney and Mokey were brothers, two years apart in their age. They were born in a small town in South Africa called Potchefstroom. Barney, when he finished school at the Potchefstroom High School for boys, went to London England, where he qualified as a Doctor. Mokey, when he matriculated at the same school, joined him in London, where he qualified as a pharmacist. Once they had obtained their degrees, they both returned to Potchefstroom, Barney to set up a practice as a Doctor and Mokey as a Pharmacist, starting a small Pharmacy called the Mooi River Pharmacy, named after the Mooi River that ran through the town.
When I matriculated, I went to London and qualified as a Pharmacist at Chelsea Polytechnic, the same college Mokey, who was my father, had qualified at years before. Once qualified, I returned to Potchefstroom, and I worked in the Pharmacy, gradually taking over the management as Mokey became less active with age. He started spending more and more time at home, or visiting Barney who had also retired. The two brothers were very close, and very good friends.
At the age of 82, Barney became very ill, and could hardly move out of a chair at his home. Mokey would spend more and more time with him, the two brothers reliving memories of their youth.
One afternoon, when Mokey was still at home having his afternoon nap, the lights at the Pharmacy went out and the cash registers crashed open. I rushed upstairs and reset the electrical trip switches. When I came downstairs to the Pharmacy, as I stepped in the door, the lights flickered and went out again with the cash registers crashing open noisily. Once again I ran upstairs and reset the electrical trip switches. This time when I returned to the pharmacy, the lights remained on, but my personal phone started ringing. I picked it up.
“Jack,” the voice of my aunt, Barney’s wife said, “please tell your father that Barney has just died.”
I rushed home to break the bad news to my father. He was devastated.
Potchefstroom was a town with close to 100 Jewish families, with some member of a family passing away almost yearly. Over the next year, there was not one death in the Jewish community. Then, exactly one year later, my father Mokey died of a heart attack while visiting my brother who lived in Cape Town. His body was flown to Potchefstroom where he was buried next to Barney. Once he was buried two other seniors in the Jewish community passed away.
And so, two brothers who were friends all their lives lie next to each other in the cemetery in Potchefstroom.
