Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - October 22, 2006
Wally Mbhele

"MY BROTHER:"

We prayed for his speedy recovery. We prayed for his wife too. We prayed that God would give their children courage in the face of a difficult situation unfolding in the family

MY SISTER-IN-LAW:

She always spoke about how important it was that she must recover because she did not want to leave her children by themselves. She hung onto life even on occasions when we all thought it was all over

THEIR CHILDREN:

Not long after the local government elections, my sister-in-law also passed away during her sleep at home. Her children did not cry. They had become hardened by the many months of pain they witnessed their mother going through Print Send to a friend

MY BROTHER died in August last year. His wife passed away in April this year. They both died of HIV/Aids. I visited my brother in hospital just a few hours before he passed away. He did not spend a long time in hospital as he died on the very same day he had been admitted.

I was accompanied by several family members, including his children and my other brothers and sisters. The only one who was not at his bedside that night was his wife. She had just been discharged from the same hospital and was still recuperating at home.

No one in the family knew what exactly was eating them away. We could only guess.

I had driven to Bethlehem, in the Free State, after my siblings had called me in the early hours of the Saturday morning to inform me that "Bra Mike has been admitted to hospital in a serious condition".

I was recuperating at home following a dental operation when the message of Mike's illness came through. I sensed from my younger brother's tone on the phone that Mike's condition was dire. I was asked to come urgently to Bethlehem for a family meeting.

Although I had not fully recovered from my operation, I set out on the road from Johannesburg to the Free State to be by his side.

I knew my brother as someone who enjoyed a healthy life. He was physically a strong person. He had been in hospital only once before, some few years previously after he had broken a leg during the family's ancestral feast.

It was almost two months since I had seen him and there had been nothing then to suggest that he was not in good health.

However, when I got to his bedside in hospital, Mike was no longer the person I had last met.

I was not only shocked, I was devastated to see him lying in bed, unable to move.

I wondered how a person could lose such a considerable amount of weight in such a short space of time.

Mike could no longer eat or walk. He could no longer talk. He had become emaciated, a real shadow of himself.

He was coughing heavily. There appeared to be something choking him as he tried to talk to us. We did not know what message he wanted to convey to us. It was difficult to figure out what he could possibly have been trying to say.

As the visiting hour came close to an end, we all knelt on the floor around his bed, our eyes closed, as my elder sister led us in prayer.

We prayed for his speedy recovery. We prayed for his wife too. We prayed that God would give their children courage in the face of the difficult situation unfolding in the family.

As we rose to bid him goodbye, we noticed that Mike had fallen asleep while we were praying.

"Your dad will be all right soon" was all I could manage to say to his two children as we left the hospital ward. What we did not know or realise as we left the hospital was that Mike was never going to wake up again. That was going to be his final sleep.

"How is my husband's condition?" asked his wife upon our return from the hospital.

I informed her that "we left him sleeping and we all think he is going to be okay soon".

Two hours after we left the hospital we were informed that he was no more.

My sister-in-law could not handle the news of her husband's death. She immediately collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital, where doctors stabilised her.

She was discharged the same Saturday night of her husband's death.

When I later went to arrange for a death certificate, the doctor told me that my brother had been diagnosed with acute pneumonia before he had died. He did not say anything about HIV/Aids.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law's condition appeared to be taking a gradual turn for the worse.

Although she could still stand on her feet, she started vomiting frequently.

Although she could still talk, she suddenly stopped eating. She said she had lost her appetite for food.

It was not long after Mike was buried that she rapidly started losing weight too. After that she was continually in and out of hospital.

When I visited her on one occasion after she'd been discharged from hospital, her hair had become fluffy. There were sores all over her body.

She told me that she knew she was going to die. She did not want to, as she still wanted to see her children grow.

I could not bear the pain of seeing my brother's two children watching their mother withering away - right in front of their eyes.

It was the pain in their eyes that compelled me to take them under my guardianship.

I felt that by taking them away I was saving them the pain and trauma of witnessing their mother constantly being taken to hospital.

By then they knew she was suffering from HIV/Aids. She had told them.

She had also told female members of the family that Mike had died of the same disease.

She had disclosed that she had long ago tested positive for HIV, but had not believed that HIV/Aids existed then.

Even if it existed, she had believed it was something that could be cured by traditional medicine, she said.

She and my brother had kept it a closely guarded secret. Apart from the family, they did not want anyone, especially not their children, to know about it.

Her infection was at an advanced stage when she started taking antiretroviral drugs.

There was, however, something remarkable about my sister-in-law as she battled the infection: in the face of looming death, she never lost hope.

She spoke of how she would one day recuperate and be able to go back to work.

She had become the sole breadwinner after my brother had passed away. Even the tuck shop he had run had collapsed following his death.

The thought of dying and leaving her children at a young age appeared to be the reason for my sister-in-law's strong will to live. She always spoke about how important it was that she recover because she did not want to leave her children by themselves. She hung onto life even on occasions when we all thought it was all over.

She was determined not to lose the fight against HIV/Aids.

Life had become hell for all of us in the family.

There were times when we asked ourselves if there was any virtue in her continuing to live because her condition had become so serious that the writing was all over the wall. She was barely hanging onto life.

However, it is a great sin in our culture to think of death as an option, no matter the amount of suffering a person is going through or how close to death that person might be at any given time.

It was during the local government elections campaign earlier this year that her condition went from bad to worse.

I watched local politicians making various promises of a better life for all as they campaigned for votes. I had become sensitised to matters around HIV/Aids because of the crisis we were facing in the family.

It struck me that HIV/Aids was still not an issue to politicians. They were saying almost nothing about the epidemic during their campaigning.

Not long after the elections, my sister-in-law passed away, in her sleep at home.

Her children did not cry. They had become hardened by the many months of pain they had witnessed their mother go through.

They had - within a period of less than a year - become orphans, a situation which has called on me to become their father.

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Wally Mbhele is deputy managing editor: politics and policy at the Sunday Times

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