I remember our mother on the first floor of our Johannesburg house as she tells me about your feet. I was tiny but it was the first time that I understood that there was something different about you. Mum let me touch your feet, gently of course, and stroke your toes. You still had feet and toes then. I realised then that your feet were unlike mine, and that you were special. Everything about you was special to me.
It is astounding how transparent this memory is for me. Mum and I are sitting side by side on the sofa and she is holding you in her arms. Gently she lifts the blanket that is covering you and lets me hold your little feet. I don't think that she explained in great detail what was different about your feet, nor that you were going to have an operation, but in her subtle style she made me aware of your presence and your needs. I have never really thought about it until now, but I think I can say that it was the first moment in which you became part of my life, up until then you had only existed on the periphery.
I remember our mother walking up the stairs with you in her arms, while I was climbing alongside her on her right. I was still so small that I had to climb up each stair and could not be said to walk up them! I think she had friends round for tea.
You see, Oz, my first memory of myself is also my first memory of you.
My next memory is your first pair of prostheses. They were carbon fibre tubes with a flat bottom but without feet that were supposed to alleviate the build-up of pressure on the bone. You learnt to walk with those prostheses. I can remember Mum putting your prostheses on in your bedroom in our Johannesburg house and then bringing you through to the corridor where you would practise walking down the passage. It is incredible to me how crystal clear this memory of you is, you must have been about one and a half and I would have been four. After a while I was allowed to help you put the prostheses on. I remember Mum carefully explaining to me how to attach them and where I had to remove the Velcro strap so as to remove the pressure from the stump. She showed me where the bone had been amputated and how it forms a sort of a bump. I remember being very curious about that bump and desperately wanting to understand why it formed where it did and how it had happened.
These are beautiful memories for me, full of tenderness and affection because that is how it was when we were small. To begin with we fussed over you but pretty quickly you lost your position on that special pedestal and had to get on with things by yourself. And that was pretty much when we started to really play together.
In the beginning we were bicycle mad. I used to attach your little blue and white plastic bicycle with a rope to my saddle and then tow you around behind me, up and down the stairs, inside, outside, regardless. I taught you everything I knew! We also enjoyed playing with cars and you were often willing to swap your newer cars against my more trashed vehicles, all I had to do was convince you that mine were in fact better which was really very easy as you put blind faith in whatever it was that came out of my mouth! Those were the days. Only joking! You wised up to my tricks very quickly.
Oz, I think you are a remarkably trusting guy, and you are never judgemental, you are very open-minded and intelligent in your approach to understanding the situations life has thrown at you. Sometimes I think people misinterpret you because you are friendly, kind and polite to a fault with everyone. But of course, as you know, and I know, there is a huge difference between sharing experiences and information and really opening yourself up to someone and allowing them to become part of the very small circle of people that you trust absolutely. In fact I think you are a far more reserved person than the initial impression you give people.
I think it is also a legacy of our childhood. Dad has always taught us to be friendly with all but to need no one, to be strong and self-sufficient. He was quite a disciplinarian and often told us that he was not interested in spoilt or rude children, we could be naughty and mischievous but we had to take care we never stepped over the mark. It was always a mark of honour for both of us to impress our father.
In fact Dad was very strict with us, particularly before the divorce. Whenever we came to him in tears and looking for reassurance after having got into some fix, he would reprimand us and tell us that crying was only for weaklings and sissies. He hated our whining and made a point of teaching us to solve our own problems and clean up after ourselves the hard way. He was a loving father but also a hard man who expected the best from us and whose standards were always very high. He always spurred us on, pushed us forward to be courageous, to try new things, to want to improve ourselves. He brought us up to believe that we could achieve whatever it was that we wanted to achieve.
Do you remember that go-kart my godfather made for me? It was without brakes and we used to literally fly down the hill leading up to our house, in fact we used your prostheses to come to a halt and burnt through countless soles on your shoes in the process. By the time we finally came to a halt, your blind terror at our speed would have reduced you to a gibbering wreck but you were always immediately ready to walk back up and start all over again.
And do you remember that time we decided to climb up that brick wall, pretending to be rock climbers, but attached with a hosepipe. I remember asking you if the hosepipe was safe and resisting the strain, you answering yes and then of course the hosepipe snapped and I fell the four or so metres down to the ground. I broke my arm, but you were the one who was crying and distraught. I think you felt terribly guilty and so in the end I was the one that consoled you.
Then came the age of rollerblades. You were good at blading, much better than I was. You spent all your time blading, in fact to this day I remain convinced that it is the rollerblading that was instrumental in developing the muscles that you now use to run. I remember how complicated it was for you to get them on and off again as rollerblades have a reinforced ankle section but as you don't have an ankle there was no joint to flex to help your foot in and then out. A nightmare. You were a wonderful blader who invented some incredible tricks. In particular I remember you picking up speed and then leaping forward and landing dramatically onto your knees and then sliding forward like a music/film star. Once you realised that the fibreglass that protected your knees also prevented you from hurting yourself, there was no stopping you. You were fearless.
When you were growing up your legs were replaced often but never often enough, as you were so active and rough on your legs the prostheses suffered a lot of wear and tear. Every three months or so we would have to go back to the technicians to have the fibreglass readjusted because inevitably you would splinter or actually break it. In addition Mum used to take your clothes to a special tailor to have your trousers reinforced with particularly resistant patches so that you would not hole them quite so easily. If she did not do this you would tear your trousers within an hour of having put them on. This all required preparation and time and so on those occasions that you required a more elegant wardrobe Mum had to plan in advance. I remember going to a wedding with you, Mum had given you a brand new pair of trousers but you ruined them pretty much immediately as you were climbing all the trees, sliding and then falling out of them, not to mention the friction caused by the fibreglass and the prostheses rubbing against the fabric.
Whenever possible we could be found climbing up whatever was available. In my opinion this was how you developed your incredible sense of balance. And do you remember how heavy your first prostheses were? I think it must have been unbelievably onerous for such a small child to carry such a heavy dead weight all the time; it was like a permanent workout for you. You wore those prostheses until you turned twelve or thirteen and as you grew older so your limbs became bigger and heavier too, which explains how you came to develop your athlete's butt.
At the time we slept in a bunk bed and every night we fought as to which of us was going to sleep on top. I remember Dad obliging us to take turns. We hardly ever used the ladder; the test was to put our hands on the side and to use the strength in our torso muscles, shoulders and arms to pull ourselves up onto the
top bed. You were really strong. I remember you sitting on the kitchen floor and then pulling yourself up onto the counter with the strength in your upper body alone. It was around this time that Dad made your prostheses two rather oddly shaped artificial socks made of sheepskin; the idea was to protect your limbs as the fibreglass tended to crack when it became too cold.
Our Honeydew house was fantastic, paradise for children like us, there was no end of space for us to cycle in, or trees for us to climb. We were very lucky to have a father who worked very hard to provide for us materially (and who made the Honeydew house possible) and a mother who took such loving care of us. Admittedly it was only the first part of our lives but then again people do say that the early years are the most important ones. You and I were allies.
Of course with time things change. The age difference that separates us, one year and eight months, is now irrelevant but as a child, and particularly in the period following our parents' divorce, I felt and took my responsibilities as the eldest child and the older sibling very seriously. I felt very protective towards you and Aimée but also of our family equilibrium. It was important to me that you and Aimée got on well and did not bicker.
Do you remember that I was awarded a scholarship, which I then refused as I was worried about leaving you and Aimée alone? When I started boarding school I worried incessantly that I would not be there for you should you need it and I was relieved when it was your turn to come to boarding school. Your starting boarding school coincided with Mum becoming engaged and I was happy and more relaxed as I believed things were finally settling down and there would be more space for me to let loose and express myself.
But then suddenly the bottom fell out of our world. It was 2002; our mother had remarried in November of that year and it was our first Christmas without our parents in the company of our school friends and grandparents. It had been a brilliant summer even though I had managed to catch hepatitis and had been very ill indeed. When Mum returned from her holidays she told me she had not been at all well over the month of December and it seemed that her symptoms were the same I had suffered before being diagnosed with hepatitis. My having had hepatitis convinced her doctors that she had hepatitis and so two further weeks went by with her being tested for hepatitis on three separate occasions. During this period she continued taking her medication, but unfortunately it was only later that we discovered that she had developed an allergy to it. Her condition kept worsening but I comforted her and told her that I too had been terribly unwell with hepatitis and that she would improve. By the time her doctors realised what was wrong and had her admitted to the hospital it was too late.
It was an awful time in our lives but doubly hard for me. For a long time afterwards I was racked with guilt, I have relived time and time again our long conversations with me sitting at her bedside and her telling me how unwell she was feeling, and my comforting her that it had been exactly the same for me during my illness with hepatitis. On one occasion she even asked me if I was certain that our symptoms were identical but I simply reassured her.
To this day I believe that my brush with hepatitis gave her a false sense of security and meant that she was not nearly attentive enough to her symptoms or to pressuring her doctors into finding both the necessary answers and a more appropriate treatment plan more quickly. Deep down I know that if I had not been ill with hepatitis her illness would have seen a different outcome. Having said that, I have come to accept that such is life, her illness is no one's fault only part of her and our tragic destiny. But it has been very hard for me and the fact that I have never really spoken about my feelings compounded it for me. I suppose I had to make peace with myself first.
I think now that the weight of responsibility on my shoulders and the role that I had carved out for myself as the eldest child after our parents' divorce greatly contributed to my behaviour. My first year in boarding school had been the first in which I had truly let my hair down and I had partied and drunk and smoked as much as possible without giving half a thought to the possible consequences. My wild excess was how I developed hepatitis and in retrospect I can't help but think if I had behaved differently things would have gone differently. I suppose when you are young, and I was still very young, you desperately need a reason to explain why things happen as they do. I was so close to our mother and her loss was an enormous blow and loss to me.
The sensation that I had somehow sacrificed my life and myself in vain when our mother died tore me apart.
You and I dealt with that period of our lives very differently. I mutated from being a polite, responsible, well-organised, studious and sporting young man into a wild rebel. I was out of control; I drank at school, regularly got into fist fights and partied all the time. Nothing held any sway over me. Nothing seemed to matter to me. Although I did not see things quite as clearly at the time, it was my way of coping with my grief and remains a period of my life in which I did a lot of growing up and learnt a lot. Your reaction was almost the opposite; you became incredibly focused and driven within your chosen sports and your training programme picked up in intensity.
After Mum passed away I did not want to return to boarding school, I wanted nothing to do with that world nor did I want to see anyone, whereas your initial reaction was to return to school and seek refuge among your friends. I remember how astounded and affronted I was that you wanted to return to boarding school on the evening of her funeral. I don't think I ever told you that your behaviour was beyond my comprehension.
Over the years our grandmother has played a vital role in keeping us close. She is an incredible woman and I love her with all my heart almost as much as I loved our mother. Throughout our lives she has been constant, she has stood by us and been the person capable of convincing each of us to listen to the other one and so have a greater understanding of opinions and approaches different from our own, and this time was no different. I think of her as the matriarch at the head of our family.
We struggled to see eye to eye during that time but fortunately our grandmother brought us back together. There was resentment and misunderstanding between us. I was consumed by my distress and sorting myself was more difficult than I could have imagined, and it seemed to me that you had deserted me in my moment of need. I felt that you were confiding in and being supported by your friends and had moved away from me. I know that you, Aimée and I are rather reserved personalities and that each of us is very cautious when it comes to emotions and the people to whom we entrust those emotions and, of course, that there is a big difference between friends and acquaintances, but the bottom line was that I felt alone and so it was that with time our mother's death became a taboo subject about which we talked little and infrequently.
Aimée's life was very different from our own and required different adjustments from her. While we were in boarding school she was living with our Aunt Diane but we spoke to each other often and spent weekends together.
I believe that our personalities and our lives have been shaped by this experience. Part and parcel of our family's approach to life is the lesson that if you lose your way in life, no one can find it for you, you have to do it yourself. Only you can help yourself. You must rely on yourself to find your way and to stay true to that way. To be honest it took me quite a while to find my way again.
After our mother's death I was very caught up in myself, on the one hand I wanted and needed my brother and yet on the other I rejected everything, nothing touched me, nothing interested me. Our mother was no longer with us and as a result my life had lost its meaning, yet you seemed at peace with yourself and happy in boarding school surrounded by your friends. Sport, and your training, had taken over from your previous hobbies like passing the afternoon on the back of your motorbike.
After a while, once I had exhausted my alternatives, I too returned to boarding school. It was a good compromise; I decided if boarding school worked for you, it could work for me.
At least Pretoria Boys' High had your presence go
ing for it and although I was not wild about your friends, and I had even managed to incur the wrath of the school principal, I eventually carved a place out for myself.
I can't say that I was much support to you over that time. Of course when I was at a low ebb, or you were, we would come and confide in the other one but that apart, we fought bitterly. We were both floundering our way through a hellish time of our lives.
Thank God that things are different today. Although we rarely speak of the loss of our mother and how much we miss her, we are very close again. It is difficult to know where to begin, we have such respect for one another and we are both discreet individuals. Fortunately for each of us, Aimée has been an incredible support to both of us. She handled our mother's passing better than we did and is a good listener. Our situation was different; you and I are so similar and it is terrifically difficult to see someone you love suffer terribly for the same reason that is causing you to suffer, it was so frustrating and left me feeling disempowered, there was nothing I could do, no way I could make it better. I felt so hopeless and struggled to simply let go and let time do what was necessary.
Even today we tend to share the good things in your life: your adventures, the wonderful and new discoveries you make on your travels around the globe, your new house, your dogs, women . . . The internet is more forthcoming than you are with information regarding your career. I know that we are joined by a bond that is far deeper than these novelties in your or my life and that if something important happened to you, you would share it with me and likewise. On a couple of occasions I have found myself sitting at home watching television while you are abroad and I have watched you on television. It is incredible; I get so excited that I am moved to tears, tears of joy of course. The last time I started shouting to all that would listen to me that you are my brother! I am so proud of you.
There have been other occasions where I have seen you just back from a trip and absolutely exhausted but unable to pull back, sit still and simply rest yourself. Although I respect your choices, I worry about you because you are my brother and I care about you.
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