Highway to heaven
At the end of a road to nowhere is a direct line to your dearly departed — via a back rub
McGregor speciality. I’d booked a massage even before reserving a room.
When I arrived at the therapist’s studio, everything seemed normal enough: the sounds of the rainforest heavy in the air, the room warm and cosy, a few crystals scattered around for ambience.
It was only after I was naked on the table, the masseuse kneading the back of my neck with big farm hands that it started to get a bit odd. “Tell me about your brother,” she said. And so I did … reluctantly. “He lives in the States and just got a new job. No girlfriend, but happy.” “And your grandfather?” “He’s amazing, 95 years old and sharp as a whip,” I replied. “Not that one; the other one.” “Oh, he died when my mother was nine. I never met him.”
“That’s what I’m getting,” she said. A hollow pause hung over the massage table, and then she continued, “This may sound strange, but he’s here with us now.”
I could only murmur a slight, “Oh, really,” as I was more preoccupied by the idea that my grandfather had dropped in while I was in the buff.
“Did you ever receive anything from him from your mother? There’s something he wants you to have.”
“No, nothing,” I said a little too curtly. Finally she resigned herself to grappling with my muscles rather than my offish personality, and the conversation ended as abruptly as it had started.
A week or two later, I relayed the story to my mother, the two of us laughing hysterically, my mom admitting that unfortunately her father died so suddenly (heart attack) that he’d left nothing behind for even her, let alone her children to come. But just as we were about to say our goodbyes, she remembered something.
“Wait,” she said. “There is one thing … I haven’t even thought about them until now. Your grandfather’s memoirs. He wrote them while he was being hidden by a Catholic priest during the Holocaust. I’ve never bothered to have them translated, but don’t you have a German friend?”
And just like that I realised that sometimes even the most seemingly obvious of dead-ends can lead to the most incredible of places. — © Stephanie Katz is a freelance writer and the managing editor of CapeTownMagazine.com