The Lyndi Tree. JA Ginn Fourie
her cheerful voice, her love and consideration of our needs and care for both herself and her brother.
My husband beckons me to take a seat next to him and Ant. The time has come to close the casket and say goodbye one more time,
“Bye, my precious angel. I’ll see you in good time when we rise to meet Him in the air.” And then,
“Schleep like a babe ‘til then.” These are the words she’d use when we said goodnight. “Schleep like a babe Mooksa,” she’d say concluding our telephone call.
Lyndi in Botswana
Ian tells of the times Lyndi had joined them to build a church in Botswana or spend a weekend together. Once she had popped in en-route to borrow money for a friend, she had paid it back promptly. He suggested that violence only begets more violence and that the most appropriate Christian response to this violent death is to absorb it, just as Lyndi’s soft body has absorbed the bullets on that fateful day, four days previously. What does absorbing grief mean? As the question flashes through my mind, I dismiss it immediately with Scarlet O’Hara’s,
‘I’ll think about that tomorrow when I can stand it’.
My husband and Ant stand at the podium with arms around each other while they thank everyone for coming to honour our child and sister. My husband gives a moving life sketch – She was a little charmer from the word go… always busy making her surroundings beautiful, a happy and a better place to be. He adds a note in Afrikaans from her first teacher who has heard the news,
Ek onthou so goed daardie flikker in die bruin oogies asook die glimlag’ – vertel Petro Theron van Marquard – ‘I remember the flicker in those brown, smiling eyes so well’ tells Petro from Marquard – That’s what I will miss he continues. Ant holds his hand as he fights for control - pain written all over his face. Then it is Ants turn to thank the young ones for their presence and love that sustains us in his enormous grief. We stand around the casket, family and friends with our arms around each other. Now it’s my turn. Will my voice hold? Without a quivery voice or even a tear, in an even and controlled rhythm, it all pours out.
Gracious Father
You gave your only Son
to bring healing for every soul on earth
Thank you for our only daughter
May healing come through her death
to each person she touched - especially those who murdered her
Mary, Mother of God our children, died at the hands of evil men
Lyndi had no choice, no time
But your son said it for her:
“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
We gave her bed and board and some love
You gave her forgiveness and a love that was:
honest,
pure,
selfless,
colour and gender-free.
Dear God she taught me well of you
able to listen,
ready to hear.
That was her life that you gave her
Her death was swift and painless, thank goodness.
My heart is broken
The hole is bottomless
it will not end
But you know all about it.
Thank you for the arms,
the lips,
the heartbeats
of family and friends to carry us.
I trust you with my precious Lyndi
This planet is a dangerous place to live
I know that you will come soon to fetch us
I wish it were today
But I will wait for your time.
The organ sounds the postlude as the pallbearers gather around the casket to carry Lyndi to the cemetery, a young black friend leading the parade. Taking turns - down the hill and over the dam wall, we walk the long stretch of road. The rope handles chaffing, but nothing is too much trouble to bear our precious child to her resting place. Beside us the sloped vineyard bakes in the summer sunshine and beyond, the wall of the Helderberg Mountains rise as if to protect us.
Carrying Lyndi’s casket to the cemetery
Thoughts flood my every step; like Sunday morning tennis and driving on this same road in the opposite direction; I’d been awash with the happiness and contentment that Ant and Lyndi were home and asleep, or sometimes Lyndi had made a foursome with the grups - grown-ups. Her tennis like her life was a steady, consistent playing of the ball. My mind is grappling with what it will be like to never speak to her again, never hear that laughter or feel her arms twined around me, in a long embrace. No more looking into those bright brown eyes, thanking God for her safety and health. The thought of her perfect teeth comes to me, each one a pearl that has never needed a filling or bracing. Now she doesn’t need them any longer so what does it matter. At that moment, the futility of life seems overwhelming - nihilism beckons with a gnarled finger. I resist knowing that this darkness must pass. But, in the days and weeks to follow I have to deal with the impulses to phone, to share something unique or call in at her flat with a treat,
“Let’s take in a movie Mooksa” or “Let’s go a-shoppin’” and the dreams that are so real – the nightmare is in waking up. Perhaps it is all meaningless?
Then on special occasions like her birthday when her chair is empty or at the time of her friends’ weddings when I feel devastated that we hosted a funeral instead of a wedding! I read a cameo written by a dear friend capturing the essence of that day and meaning returns with a flourish:
Uncle Billy Mason, Ginn and Ian
It was Monday, January 3 of the new year – the year of the vote, the year of hope. Yet the dawn did not celebrate this new morn - it dragged its rays behind it, behind the Helderberg – while white and grey clouds moved silently, determinedly over the puffy eye’d sky. Would it actually rain?
But then, for a flickering instant, I remembered hope …. And the rain? Well, it stayed away. For this was Lyndi’s day … And this is my point of view.
Ian stood at the open door, shaking hands, welcoming people – an invitation to a tragedy. Opposite was Stella, skitterende - sparkling Stella, eyes red, sparkling not now, wearing a tender smile, handing out bulletins – handing out proudly the memory of her best friend – and with it, she handed me comfort.
Johann, you were the next I saw. There were the pews, a mass of faces – but that was a blurry