The Last Right by Marianne Thamm (my reading book .txt) 📗

Soon after they had got back from honeymoon this telegram arrived saying that Patsy’s mother was dying. That drew us very close together because after her mother died I became her mother.

I have been with Patsy and Neville on this journey of Craig’s life. And oh what a beautiful little child he was! You would not have thought there was anything wrong with him. But we were over the moon at having this little boy in our family.

When Neville and Patsy used to go away or take a break in Cape Town they would leave him with me. He loved it because in a way I was his second mother. Craig was never a good sleeper. He used to wake up quite a bit.

Then he started to grow up and he was very woelig, which is such a lovely Afrikaans word for “busy” I suppose. We used to play Snakes and Ladders together, Ludo and card games. We cooked and we baked but I used to find that as soon as we start cooking then it was too slow for him, he wanted to get on to the next thing.

We built sand castles and we fished in little pools. Patsy went back to teaching at one point and he had a little bicycle. They were living in PE and it was quite a big house in Weybridge Park, with a slope on the driveway down to the road.

It was quite a busy road. Now Craig was determined that he was going to learn to ride that bicycle. But he can’t ride alone. I must push him and push him and push him and then I try and let go but he won’t let me yet.

Eventually I decided it was my mission to teach this child how to ride on his bicycle. I knew it would mean so much to him.

As you know, little boys have no fear and he laughs and he says, “Let go, let go” and he is just about falling and eventually I just let go for a little while and it was magic, he went on his own. It was a wonderful feeling.

We went to all his birthday parties and Patsy really used to go to town with special birthday cakes baked in the shape of whatever was fashionable at the time.

But I would always notice at the parties that all the other kids are playing rough, they are kicking balls and running around and things but Craig really couldn’t do that. His brain was completely fine, he was a highly intelligent child, but he just didn’t have the coordination.

I would always take him to the school bus just a few streets away from the house. Patsy was teaching and I took him up. This was for preschool. I remember sometimes he used to come back and tell me he had these terrible headaches.

One day Craig and Patsy came to visit my husband and me here in Humansdorp. He would say, “Shhh, you two are making too much noise. My head is very sore.”

And then Patsy and I would wink at each other. We used to think it was just for attention. Then I’d take him to the room to lie down a bit. Then he lies for quite a while. Then he comes again and says his head is so sore.

We didn’t realise that it could be something. It was a brain tumour causing this dreadful pain.

Then one day they discovered he was crying in class. He had this terrible headache. They sent for Patsy. She and Neville took him straight to the doctor.

There was no time whatsoever to waste. The doctor said they had to get on the plane that evening with the child and get to Cape Town to the Red Cross Hospital.

They were there for a long time. I flew up for the day before they did the operation. We were all just praying.

And then the day they came back they stopped in here at my house. And I watched as this little cocoon got out of the car. I can only describe him as a cocoon because he was so bandaged up to the top.

He was the first to get out of the car and he said, “Nana, I never want to go back to that terrible place.” And I said to him, “You won’t have to, it’s all over now.”

He got so many toys then. I got all these toys, some of them on appro, for him to choose. And then he went home, but things didn’t go well for Patsy. She was very fragile.

My husband and I would go there for weekends. I had a wonderful husband but a husband who could not find the bread tin in the house. He didn’t want to stay over in PE and wanted to come home so I had this tug of war.

I told him that I wasn’t going to leave Craig now and that Neville had to go to work and that Patsy was battling very badly. She went into a very deep depression. “I need to keep things going for them,” I said. She just went to her bedroom and stayed there.

I can remember a minister who I knew from Humansdorp came to see her. She was upstairs in her room and she used to trust me with everything. She used to tell me, “Mom, I don’t want people up here, only you.”

I had to deal with her medication. I made a chart. She had to take 15 tablets in the morning and mark this all off and be responsible and make sure it was all correct.

And while the minister was present, I was sitting on the one side of the bed and she was lying in it. He looked at her and she looked at him. And then he asked her, “So, how are you? Are you the hell in with God?”

And she just looked at him.

And he told her she had every right to