Song for Sarah

by Jansen, Jonathan;

  On the first day of her new life Sarah rose early as usual and dressed for work. The starched white uniform, the coloured flaps on the shoulders, the name tag on the chest and brightly polished shoes. Then she opened the door and went to sit on the hardback chair in the dining room with head slightly bowed. Sarah did not move but tears welled up in her eyes as she tried to come to terms with a new reality called retirement. It would take a while before former Staff Nurse Jansen returned to her room to change her work clothes and start a new life.

  When Sarah emerged from her room she was wearing one of those check overalls that older Cape Flats women wore when wading into the surf at Kalk Bay beach or for general work around the house. Sarah now spent more time caring for the neat little garden at the front of the house facing the street; nothing was done at the back. With small garden tools she worked on her knees digging up stones and sand and laying neat tracks into which flowers and grass were planted. In no time the corner house had an attractive garden area with bulbs growing in the shade of the ever-present Port Jackson tree still lurking over the gate. The entrance to the house looked very presentable and Sarah was noticeably proud of her project.

  Sarah in the garden at the corner house, from where she sorted out errant neighbours as they passed – the Port Jackson tree still hovers menacingly in the background...

  As one after the other neighbour would soon discover, that kneeling position in the garden area was also a pulpit from which Sarah would straighten out crooked souls. Some must have resented the fact that Sarah had retired. The Dawson brothers would file across the dunes and come around the corner drunk, holding on to the corner fence for balance. Big mistake. Sarah would rise, fuming, and climb into one of the wayward sons now well into their thirties or forties. ‘You are an embarrassment to your mother,’ Sarah would preach. ‘Shame on you.’ Sarah always had a deep respect for Mrs Dawson, the well-groomed and respectful old lady at the other end of Tenth Avenue.

  Then something funny would transpire. The boys would stand to attention and not say a word. Once Sarah had washed their faces with rebuke, she would send them on their way. Now the miracle: the Dawson boys who a few minutes before were lurching from one side to the next would walk straight up, feet into the air, as if they had suddenly been cured of a loop-en-val (walk-and-fall) malady. It was the attempt to stay upright that generated endless mirth among Sarah’s children as they witnessed the effects of Sarah-iah law on the living.

  Naomi remembers...

  During her retirement years Sarah did a sewing course and went on to purchase a more modern machine than the Singer she used when we were children; later came the rather grand overlocker sewing machine that filled out one of the bedrooms. She bought metres and metres of material, sewed bedding and sold this for extra income, thereby ensuring that her family was adequately cared for. Sarah had invested all she had to ensure that her children had the best possible education under her watch.

  Her grandchildren were her life when they eventually came along. One learnt that peer pressure does not let up even among sixty-something-year-olds. ‘Wanneer dan, Sally?’ (When, then?), her friends would press as they passed by the corner house. They were implying that the grandchildren were long in coming, as though even this was something over which she had control.

  XXIV

  The sister not from Africa

  Sarah saved up money to add to a loan that enabled the excited grandmother to travel overseas to witness the birth of her grandchild. Firstborn had secured a Bishop Tutu scholarship to do a two-year master’s degree at Cornell University in Upstate New York. If one thing was going to lift Sarah out of the Cape Flats, if only for a few weeks, it was the birth of her first grandson.

  It was a long and disorienting flight from Cape Town through London to New York, but Sarah was a sophisticated woman and could ask if she got lost. Eventually she landed at JFK Airport where Firstborn collected her after a long drive from rural New York to Manhattan. Coming off the plane Sarah was dressed formally with everything in perfect place as if she had just stepped out of a dressing room. Mother and son made the five-hour drive back and she could not stop talking about her first visit on that big jet.

  Firstborn and his wife arranged a welcoming ceremony in their small apartment on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. As the door swung open their friends from across the African continent, fellow students, welcomed the tired Sarah to campus. David, a brother from some West African country, was dressed in the brightest, flowing African robes you would find on that side of the Atlantic. He stretched out his hands expecting a hug and hailed Sarah loudly across the crowded front room: ‘Welcome, my sister from Africa,’ he proclaimed. ‘I’m not from Africa,’ Sarah shot back indignantly. ‘I’m from Cape Town.’ The friends were very understanding.

  Sarah after church with her friend, Barbara James – or Auntie Babs, as everyone called her

  To make some money, Firstborn’s wife Grace did jobs across campus, including looking after young children. A group of erstwhile hippies dropped off their chubby child wrapped in a thick jersey (they call them sweaters in those parts). The woollen jersey had a few holes in it which Sarah spotted instantly and then, to the utter horror of son and daughter-in-law, their mother found needles and wool and fixed the offending garment perfectly.

  Fortunately the easy-going friends found this act of correction kind of cute, and they came to love and respect ‘Gran’ during her short time in the USA.

  Naomi remembers...

  Being able to fly to New York to welcome her first grandson into her world was not a simple matter for this lady from Montagu, and elaborate plans had to be made. Abraham was working as a clerk at a shipping company at the time and his employer agreed to provide him with an interest-free loan that would pay for Sarah’s air ticket to the USA. The loan would be paid back by Naomi, who by then was teaching at a high school in Mitchells Plain.

  XXV

  Learning to die

  Sarah’s final test was at hand. Firstborn’s occasional visits home while working in Durban or Johannesburg were always something to look forward to. Sarah would prepare a special home-cooked dinner with dessert.

  On an overnight stay on the way to a speaking assignment upcountry, everything changed. ‘Come and sit, I must tell you something.’ Sarah did not speak like that to any of her children. She just spoke. So Firstborn sat down uneasily in the dining room on one of the couch chairs next to his mother. ‘I went to the doctor today and he sent me home; there is nothing they can do.’ That kind of language in this part of the country meant one thing – you are dying. Firstborn went into shock, his head spinning. ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’

  Sarah had had a pain in her lower abdomen for years. Back and forth to the doctor. In these poorer areas of the country you could forget about a reliable diagnosis from the local clinic. Nobody went for a second opinion, the way people with money do. So by the time Sarah showed up with unbearable pain, the cancer had already spread to other organs. Now the nurse who had spent her entire life healing others was beyond healing.

  Sarah, now retired, still tending the garden of the corner house

  Without warning, Sarah burst out crying with an intensity Firstborn had never witnessed before. About thirty seconds later, as suddenly as she had started, Sarah stopped crying.

  ‘Tea?’ she offered.

  Sarah would not cry again.

  From there on the descent towards death was steady and revealing. Sarah never blinked. Wailing mourners came and went but the mother of five remained unfazed.

  ‘Are you ready to die?’ Firstborn once asked Sarah in an emotional zone children of that generation never entered. She looked puzzled; of course she was ready. She was always ready. ‘I’m just going to miss the grandchildren,’ the doting grandmother sighed. That was clearly not the time for a scientific discussion on whether the dead can miss those left behind.

 
; The pain was unrelenting but Sarah did not complain even as the doses of morphine increased and the predictable hallucinations followed. Firstborn found any excuse to visit the one who had made him. What he did not expect on one of his visits was full-throated singing coming from the deathbed of his mother.

  ‘Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee, how great Thou art...’ It made no sense. How do you praise your Maker in a crisis like this? Should God not at least be questioned for putting one of His most faithful servants through this painful end-of-days? What’s the point of submitting your entire life to the Lord only to pass through this unbearable corridor of pain? Sarah kept on singing, returning to the chorus of that rousing hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art...’

  Some things Firstborn would never understand.

  Sarah’s older sister Aimie (Emmie, on the Afrikaans tongue) came down from Montagu to spend time with her beloved sibling. The two were eerily similar – both short, dark-skinned and completely grey. The Johnson family, it was said, went grey-haired in their teens, not of age but as a result of genetics.

  The camera caught an unforgettable moment. Here were the two sisters on the couch at Number 51, both in nightgowns and slippers, smiling up at the cameras as they devoured freshly fried fish heads, bulging eyes and all. The earthy scene conveyed such a basic, genuine happiness that made the sisters and those around them forget completely that the one with the cancer-ridden body was about to fall silent.

  Sarah was teaching her children a priceless lesson – how to die: you can fear dying so much that you forget to live.

  Naomi remembers...

  Sarah loved her daughters-in-law as her own children. How they loved her back was beautiful. It was unnecessary to make those typical mother-in-law jokes when it came to this loving and supportive mother. So when Sally’s physical body was ravished by breast cancer when she was in her sixties and stomach cancer in her seventy-fifth year, her caring daughters did all they could to support her in every way possible.

  Alda, Peter’s wife, made almost daily trips to Number 51 to cook and clean, while I would take of her physical needs. Grace called often and visited when in town, doing everything she could to ensure that her Gran, as she called her, was comfortable. At first it did not make sense to wash your mother when she was always the one providing such intimate care for her own children and grandchildren.

  She was the one who bathed and cared for the many patients in her professional care over the years. I remember the letter-writing between my mother and a Princess Alice patient from Mauritius called Rashmi; and how she took clothes to the hospital for rural patients who arrived in Cape Town with very little.

  It was time to demonstrate ‘doing the work of love’ right back. Pots of food were delivered to Number 51 to make caring for Sarah easier. Well-meaning friends and family streamed in all the time, even if they had to be encouraged sometimes to also stream out. It would become a challenge to manage this outpouring of love with the routine required to take care of someone so ill and bed-ridden.

  Sarah Susan Jansen with the once expressive brown eyes was now lying on her bed as she stared into space, confused by the pain-killing morphine and its debilitating side-effects.

  Eyes that used to beam with delight as her first grandchild enjoyed an evening bath in a plastic tub in Grandma’s room. Eyes that acknowledged accomplishment when Firstborn received his first degree before going on to achieve many more academic accolades. Eyes that conveyed pride when she handed the second son, Peter, his twenty-first birthday present — a key to his very own car. Eyes that admired her only daughter’s foray into campus Christian ministries.

  Those eyes now stared into nothingness.

  XXVI

  Great she was

  By the time the final days came around a strange ritual played itself out in the dining room of 51 Tenth Avenue. Friends and strangers would arrive to sit and tell each other moving stories about Sarah. Sarah was next door in the bedroom, unable to walk the three metres around the separating wall to take this all in. Sarah’s children were deeply moved as they heard uplifting stories about a mother who made time to mentor young women in the community, especially those in the church. She was the shoulder on whom an abused young wife could come and lean. She was the elder’s wife who consoled a young Christian convert whose family had rejected her. She not only listened, she transferred skills to young women, such as knitting jerseys and baking doughnuts. In a broken community, Sarah was the healer at work and at home. The children would appreciate more fully that Sarah the tough disciplinarian had a softer side that became better known as her life was ebbing away.

  In those final days the woman of the house revealed herself as much as in her middle life when hard work, discipline and uncompromising values bannered everything she did. Now on her queen-size bed a small, petite Sarah had shrunk even more and she was no longer in control. Firstborn would sense that vulnerability. ‘Mummy, which tie goes with this shirt?’ he asked during an overnight working visit to Cape Town. Suddenly she sat up, eyes sparkling as the decision was pondered. Sarah knew that throughout her eldest son’s life he could not care less whether anything matched in what he wore regardless of the occasion. ‘That one is better,’ the frail Sarah directed, ‘but it needs an iron.’

  Firstborn lost his Mummy before she died. Entering the room one day he greeted softly. Sarah looked up, then down, and giggled almost as if she was embarrassed. His heart sank for in that instant he knew that there was no recognition any more. The dreaded illness had gone too far and now only the body was in the room. All the children could do was to love her back.

  The daughter of September and Katie

  When Firstborn left that day he sank to his knees alongside the bed and cried intensely, something he had never done before his parents. Standing up, all he could say was, ‘Thank you, Mummy, for all you’ve done for us.’ Sarah put her hand over that of her eldest son. Something stirred inside her even then, but her son would not see his mother alive again.

  The dreaded call came at work. ‘Mummy went home’ was code for death among the Gospel People. By the time Firstborn and his family arrived back in Cape Town from Pretoria there was relief that the pain was over and a realisation that there was no point coming home any more. The corner house was home while Sarah was there. Yes, the children loved their father and cared about him, but now it was clear. When you go home, you go to your mother.

  The final minutes were recalled as the Pretoria family arrived. Abraham noticed that his life partner was in her last hours. He shared an emotional moment with Sarah that he never spoke to his children about in that way before. ‘I went to lie on the bed next to Mummy, held her hand, prayed, and just said, “Sally, ons is lief vir jou”’ (Sally, we love you). Abraham spoke for the family as well as himself.

  Everything had been prepared in advance. Sarah had decided that the grandchildren would draw the casket into the church hall. Some of the older children had serious reservations about whether the young grandchildren, then averaging ages nine or ten, should be exposed so directly to death. But Sarah had the final word, as always, so grieving kids came down the aisle with the body. The crowd stood up to pay their tributes. A group of nurses came to sing for their former colleague. And then everybody sang ‘How Great Thou Art’.

  She really was, too.

  Naomi remembers...

  Sarah’s love was demonstrated in what she did. Love to her was a verb. How could it not have been a blessing to have been reared by this woman whose reserved upbringing would not allow her to pay her growing children blatant compliments? Ek wil nie voor haar praat nie, maar... (I don’t want to speak in front of her, but...), and then one would overhear the hushed compliment. There was no further proof needed, ever. This mother loved her children deeply. She also had a heart that let so many other young people into her humble home.

  Teary-eyed friends would stop in the mall to tell of
the impact that our mother had made on their lives as the no-nonsense and yet generous woman she was. ‘Oh, I miss your mother!’ they would say.

  Nor can we forget Abe’s acknowledgement of his Princess on her birthday and their wedding anniversaries with flowers always followed by the loving admonition of the same Scripture:

  Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who serves the Lord will be praised – and – her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.

  Tears flowed freely at her funeral on that July morning in 2000. Abraham’s heart was in shreds. He could not bear the loss of his Sarah, and so he chose to be with her a mere eight months later.

  Epilogue

  An extraordinary mother had died and left an enduring legacy

  A Cape Flats mother

  Everyone’s mother

  And it is as if I still hear her words

  Reminding and encouraging

  Don’t you fall now–

  For I’se still goin’, honey

  I’se still climbin’,

  And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair

  From the poem ‘Mother to Son’ by Langston Hughes

  Sources

  All scripture verses are drawn from the King James Version of the Bible, the one used in Sarah’s home.

  Willie Adams (2017). Toe die Reënboog nog Reënboog was. Wilderness: Abrile Doman Publishers.

  Frazer Barry, ‘Grafte oppie vlakte’. Tribal Echo (lyrics).

  Jennifer Davids, ‘Poem for my Mother’ in Searching for Words (1974). Cape Town: David Philip.

  Vernon February (1981). Mind Your Colour. London/Boston: Kegan Paul International.