If running can be thought of as falling forward a little with each step and then catching yourself before you fall, then I fell forward and caught myself for 5.23km this morning, in 41 minutes, which is a rate of 7 mins 50 seconds per km. Yay! The elusive 5km. And the elusive under-eight-minute km. And it felt fairly easy really, because I set my mind on 5km, and wouldn't let myself stop after 3 circuits or 4 circuits. And every time I felt my steps slacking off I made sure I spurred on my sky-blue shoes, felt my braid swishing my elbows, and sang the rhythm a little faster in my head.
My sister had to deal with the deaths of my parents all by herself. My brother and I went out from our respective countries to see them and be with them before they died, but left before the actual end of each life. It is nearly three years since my dad died, and nearly five since my mother's death, so strange to think that they are not there anymore, in their little cluttered house, my mother with cupboards full of sewing and needlework projects she would never have the time to finish, my father with a garage chock-a-block full of tools, wood, pieces of metal and parts of engines which might perhaps come in handy one day. They were both squirrels by nature, and as a result of their early lives.
So my sister, the eldest, and therefore the most accountable by birthright, had to be the one who was there at the end, who participated in their final weeks, who was responsible for informing her siblings, who organised the funerals, sorted through all the belongings, decided what to keep and what to give away, and although she did not inherit the cluttered part of their natures, she now has all these boxes taking over a large part of her house, waiting to be sorted into shares if and when my brother and I so wish. I hold her in high esteem, for all these reasons and more.
She put some of their ashes together and buried them at the Wall of Remembrance outside the little old thatched-roof chapel which was the first Anglican church in Pinelands, before they built the huge ugly brick St Stephen's church just next door. My parents went to church when they were young and although they slacked off and doubted in the way of many older people, they always had an affinity for their roots, as one does, I suppose. She kept some of their ashes for my brother and I, and we were going to be together to scatter them for my brother's sixtieth birthday, but my sister couldn't make it because she broke her ankle.
So I have this big brown envelope in which are two little plastic bags containing the ashes of my parents. They are on one of the shelves of Tim's and my little walk-in closet in our attic bedroom, tucked away at the back. And every now and then, searching for a top I haven't worn in a while, I come across them, and am suddenly immersed in tides of feelings. I gaze at them, put my hand in to feel them, my dad blacker, my mum with more browns, which is probably a result of the different heat rates in the crematorium, I would think, it can't be that men and women are different colours, can it?
I had always thought that it would be ash, like you scrape out from our woodstove, soft ash, but it's not, it is gritty, bits and pieces, and my dad's has an inch-long piece of bone in it, the only shard from that giant's body, that great strong person who made me with his body and my mother's, with pleasure, with love, with surprise when they learned that I had taken hold in her uterus, another child, so late, a laat-lammetjie, a late lamb.
And each time I am shaken by grief, by their absence in my life, by that terrible and utter loss. They are no more. Their warm and loving selves have been reduced to this little cold bag of grit. And I miss them with my whole being.
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