‘Till death do us part’
TILL death do us part. These were words Meresiana Tuidravu stood by every single day of her marriage life.
According to a report in The Fiji Times on December 9, 1979, Mrs Tuidravu went to Colonial War Memorial Hospital, to be by her husband’s side at 6am each day.
She would spend the day with him, talking, feed him and fetched everything he needed.
At 8pm she took his hand in hers and prayed.
Then she bade him goodnight before catching a bus from Colonial War Memorial Hospital to a relative’s home at Delainavesi, Suva.
She did this every day since mid-October, when Pte Lote Tuidravu was brought home from Lebanon in a coma.
“And if I have to do it for the next 20 years, I will,” she said.
Until Christmas Eve the year before, Pte Tuidravu was a hard-working farmer on his father’s cane land near Labasa.
He was a Methodist lay preacher and community leader at Wailevu Village, a devoted husband to Meresiana, and father of Losalini, 6, Makareta, 5, Baleinarigi Sadrugu, 4, and Newamailala, 2.
“He volunteered to join the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon, mainly because he wanted to visit the places Jesus had seen,”
Mrs Tuidravu said.
In February that year, he was wounded in a shootout with Palestinian guerillas.
After complications and two operations, he sank into a coma from which he did not recover.
In October, he was well enough to be brought back to Fiji.
Mrs Tuidravu brought the children to Suva to see their father.
They returned to Labasa later to stay with their grandparents, while Mrs Tuidravu remained with her husband to take care of him.
After a gruelling routine of bathing and feeding, she would take time to go down to a cafe for a meal.
After that, it’s back to the ward. There are also visitors every day. “Someone from the army camp always comes,” Mrs Tuidravu shared.
“These orchids were brought just yesterday by Colonel and Mrs Thorpe.”
She had never been to Suva before her husband was brought back from Lebanon, but she learnt to adapt to an urban life which revolved entirely around the hospital.
“No, I do not even go to church. I have my church here.”
Each day, the first thing she did in the morning and the last chore at night, would be to pray by her husband’s bedside.