9 1943: The Death of a Brother.

1943: The Death of a Brother

The most traumatic event in my life was probably the death of my brother, Mace. I don’t have a written record of it, but as nearly as I can piece it all together, Mace died in December 1943. He was eleven-and-a-half and I had just turned ten. I can’t tell just how profoundly it changed me as a person. I may have undergone more trauma in the birth canal as I emerged from my mother — experts say that is a very traumatic experience — but, of course I cannot recollect that, but I can remember the death of Mace. That it determined the course of my life, I have little doubt because, among other things, it led to the break-up of our family.

Mace and I were never far apart. I didn’t consciously think about it at the time, but I felt secure when he was there. Starting school was probably less of an ordeal for me because Mace was there with me. Starting school meant leaving the protection of home to board with a farmer halfway between our farm and the farm school, but it was okay because Mace was with me. Mace and I received our first bicycles together — the only clear photo I have in which he features is of the two of us standing together behind one of those bicycles. Mace and I had our first cigarette together when I was about seven and he was eight and a half. We did everything together.

In December 1943, a few days before schools closed for the December holidays, Mace and I spotted a mushroom, a kowe, growing under one of the large old oak trees that stood in a line in front of our house. ‘Kowe’ is the Zulu name for a large mushroom that springs up in the veld after a thunder storm. Mace and I spotted this one and decided that, come the holidays starting from the end of that week, we would pick the mushroom and have a nice treat.

Break-up day was on Friday. On Saturday morning, after breakfast, at about 10:30, we picked our prize and took it into the house. We passed our mother who was up on a chair cleaning the oil lamp that hung from the ceiling (there was no electricity in the village in those days). She asked us what we were doing and we told her that we had picked the kowe, and could we cook it, please? She asked us, “Are you sure it’s a kowe?” We said “Yes. Sure”, so she let us pass. We had really caught her at an awkward moment.

We washed the kowe, sliced it, put butter in the enamelled frying pan, cooked it to perfection, divided the slices accurately and ate them out of the pan. It was delicious!

At lunch time, Mace was feeling a bit ‘off’ and didn’t want lunch. At about three, he was feeling decidedly sick — and I was following suit. Mum gave us each a tablespoon-full of castor oil which was the usual remedy in those days for any sort of tummy upset. I immediately brought everything up, which was my usual reaction to castor oil (I much preferred Epsom Salts). Mace kept it down.

By supper-time we were both in bed with temperatures and I think that Mum and Dad were beginning to suspect the mushroom. By nine o’clock Mace was delirious and I was decidedly very sick as well. We had to get to the doctor and the hospital that was twelve miles away in the nearest town. Mum knocked on the door of our nearest neighbour, the store-keeper up the road. Essop got dressed immediately, loaded Mace, me and Mum into his car and set off down the gravel road to Greytown as fast as he dared travel in the night.

Mace and I were put into beds next to each other in the hospital. I went to sleep and when I woke up in the morning, curtains were drawn around Mace’s bed. My brother was dead.

The kowe was not a kowe but a toadstool, or was it a kowe that had turned bad for being left in the ground for several days? We could never know, but kowes do not grow under trees. They spring up in the grass in the open.

I stayed in hospital for a few more days, recovering steadily, and Mace was buried in the town’s cemetery and all I have left of the experience today is the account from the undertaker reading 1943, Dec 17 / To Coffin & Funeral Expenses / £27 – 13 – 6d.

That, and some memories, and who knows what permanent marks scored into my personality. I remember that soon after Mace’s death and for many years that followed, I felt what can only be described as guilt — why Mace and not me? He was the robust one of us, bigger framed and strong while I was small and often sick with one thing or another. Mace was seldom ill. What had I done to survive? It is strange — I felt guilty for surviving when we had been equally exposed to the poison. I figured out later that I had pulled through because of the castor oil — when I brought it up I also eliminated what was still undigested of the mushroom.

But the worst consequence was the effect his death had on the relationships within the family. I was too young to be taken into anyone’s confidence, but I imagine that Mum blamed herself for Mace’s death. I don’t think Dad would have said anything to her (he was not the sort to voice blame) but she would have thought that he held her responsible. He had not been present: she had. Should she have accepted our judgement on the mushroom, that it was good to eat? Why did she not come down from the chair to examine it? I don’t know, but it is a good guess that this is what eventually led to the final separation between Mum and Dad, and a long period of estrangement between my mother and me, not because I blamed her for Mace’s death but because she abandoned me and my father. It was only many years later through the urging of  Dorothy-Anne, that I traced my mother to where she was and was reconciled to her.

The death of a brother or sister is bad enough, but the death of a child, at whatever age, is devastating to a parent — after all, children should bury their parents, not parents their children.

IN MEMORIAM F.A.S.

by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember

How of human days he lived the better part,

April came to bloom and never dim December

Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.

Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being

Trod the flowery April blithely for a while,

Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,

Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.

Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,

You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,

Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished

Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.

All that life contains of torture, toil and treason,

Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.

Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season

And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came.

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