Last words from Karin Brynard

As a child, she wanted to know everything about angels, writes Karin Brynard. And now... perhaps she knows enough.

WWhyhy do angels have wings, I asked my mother one day.

not roller skates or surfboards or magic carpets. And won’t their long robes lift up when they fly? I mean, people would see their broeks and stuff.

Ma was crouching by my side, safety pins in her mouth, busy pinning the seam of a new dress for me. She sighed and wiped a fine spray of sweat from her high forehead with the back of her hand.

“Angels,” she said and took one of the pins from her mouth, “always have to move super-fast. And for that they need wings.” “But roller skates are also fast.”

Ma gave the seam a sharp pull and I shifted a leg to hold firm. She inserted the next pin and smoothed the fabric over my tummy. She worked briskly, aiming to finish in time for our small-town communion service on Sunday.

“Skates need downward slopes,” she said and took another pin from the corner of her mouth. “And angels are needed in uphill places too.”

“But surfboards are very fast,” I suggested and mimicked a wave with my arms.

“Stay still,” Mom said, “I don’t want to prick you.”

After a while she said, “Surfboards are clumsy things; the angels could waste precious time wrestling them through doors. And magic carpets need to be brushed and rolled up every night. Wings, on the other hand, free up an angel’s arms to snatch you away from an oncoming car, or crawl into a tiny tunnel or a very deep well to get to you, because he can flatten those wings.”

“Are angels born?”

Mom considered her handiwork for a while, turning my child’s body this way and that. Her mountain-green eyes fixed on me lovingly. “Early each morning,” she smiled, “you should watch the first little clouds. Those rosy-pink ones. And the violet-blues. They’re scarcely more than a feathery breath but watch long enough and you’ll see them start moving.”

“Were they people before?”

“Oh, yes, of all ages. Next time you see a crooked little ouma, take a close look at her knobbly old back. Those could be wings growing out.

“And little girls with freckles,” she added, touching my nose, “they’re angels already.” I nodded solemnly and went out to play.

But soon after, an angel did visit us – the angel of death. He sneaked inside early one winter’s morning and snatched our father away. Left my mom behind like a castaway.

She tried to cope, taking care of us with hollow eyes during the day. At night she fled into the veld. Perhaps she was hoping that the angel would come for her too. But the only one who kept coming for her was me. Stumbling under a starlit sky, I would search for her among bushes and rocks in that ghostly light. Together we’d wait for the icy-blue dawn, devoid of rose-pink clouds from which angels could frolic.

“I must go to school, Ma,” I would finally break the silent spell. We would get up, hips stiff from the cold, and saunter back home.

At the end of last year, just before Christmas, the angel came at last. He sat on the back stoep outside, while inside mom lay moaning with pain. She had broken her hip at the age of 95 and her body wasn’t making it. When the pain became too severe, ma would sing to distract herself. “Abide with me Lord, fast falls the eventide,” she sang in a trembling voice as the angel patiently sat trimming his toenails outside.

On a Saturday night just after 11pm, he suddenly reached in and caught her last breath. I held my hand over her chest.

Felt her tender old heart flutter... and then slip away. My brother came, and for the rest of the night we sat with her, stroked her hair, kissed her lifeless hands and talked to her – and with each other. Until the courteous men from AVBOB came for her.

As they gently lifted her into a grey body bag, I thought I noticed an unfamiliar knobbliness behind her shoulders. I secretly smiled. And as my brother and I walked outside, we saw rose-pink and lilac clouds on the eastern horizon. Goodbye, mom, I whispered into the crisp morning air.

Or is it hello?