‘ A stranger is buried in my grave’
Isabella bought adjacent plots so she could one day be buried next to her husband – but a mystery corpse lies buried in her spot
IT WAS her husband’s last wish for her to spend eternity by his side – a wish he’d whispered as he lay on his deathbed. And it was hardly unusual, Isabella Kruger (81) says. After all, they’d barely spent a night apart throughout their 56-year marriage. Of course he’d want her by his side for eternity. They were soulmates. That’s why, two days after Marthiens succumbed to prostate cancer in 2010 at the age of 77, Isabella bought two neighbouring plots in the cemetery in Steynsrus in the Free State: one for him and one for her when her time came. And her plot would be to his left, which had been her side of the bed for more than five decades.
It cost her a sizeable portion of her pension to reserve the two graves, yet nothing would keep her from honouring her husband’s final wish.
But her promise to her late husband was broken a few years later – by a third party.
In December 2015, Isabella walked to the cemetery to place flowers on her beloved Marthiens’ grave and was horrified to discover a fresh mound of earth on her grave. Someone had been buried next to Marthiens – in the spot meant for her.
Devastated, she walked 500m from her home to the Moqhaka municipality building in town every day for weeks and then months but she couldn’t get to the bottom of the problem. And now, three years later, she’s finally had enough.
She says she can feel Marthiens is upset by the stranger resting next to him.
But the municipality isn’t bothered. Yes, officials acknowledge, it’s their mistake. But she’ll just have to be buried elsewhere.
“I told them that’s my grave but they just say I should be buried on top of my husband instead,” Isabella tells us.
“No woman can lie on top of her husband for all eternity – that’s madness. I want to lie to his left, just as we’d always shared a bed.”
Municipal officials claim they’ve reached an agreement with Isabella that she’ll be buried to Marthiens’ right, but Isabella isn’t happy with this. At all.
“I’d be in the footpath so everyone will walk over me. That’s nonsense – I won’t have it. They don’t know this tannie.”
SHE remembers the day her husband died as if it were yesterday, Isabella says. “It wasn’t a shock but it was still a blow.” Marthiens, who’d been a baker and later worked for the department of transport, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005 and had already had several heart attacks.
“Marthiens and I were always so close. The day he was diagnosed with cancer I knew our journey together was nearing its end. I knew the Lord was coming to take him soon.”
In 2008 the couple moved in with their daughter, Petro Botha-Pretorius, so she could help care for Marthiens.
Petro (52) is still her pillar of strength,
Isabella says, squeezing her daughter’s hand.
In 2010 the family was told the cancer had spread. Marthiens died on 18 July in his bed.
“I’d been with him in the room minutes before he passed,” Isabella says shakily. “He’d asked me if I’d make him a cup of tea. And then he asked for a kiss.
“I was in the passage on the way to the kitchen when I suddenly felt an intense pressure around my heart. I knew something was wrong and when I got back to the bedroom, he was gone.
“My Marthiens . . . gone after I’d kissed my love for the last time.”
Just a few days before his death she’d been sitting next to him when he’d started talking about dying, she says.
“I hadn’t wanted to talk about it but it was important to him. He told me in all the years we’d been married I’d always slept on his left side. And when I died, he wanted me to lie at his left too.”
She waves a sheet of paper in the air. “Look,” she says. “I bought plots 99 and 100 – with my last money. Now people want to tell me to let it go, that it’s not that serious. Bull! That’s my resting place and I want it back.”
The municipality’s attitude infuriates her, she says.
“My jaw dropped when they told me, ‘Tannie, you should just lie on top of him.’ A woman’s place is next to her husband – not to be doomed to lie on top of him for eternity.
“When I kept arguing they suggested I be buried in plot 100A – the one right in the footpath. Now they have another new story. The municipality says they can exhume Marthiens and bury us together elsewhere.”
But that’s not going to happen, she says. Why should her husband be exhumed and not the stranger lying beside him?
“But they don’t have an answer for this. All I get is silence.
“To this day they haven’t been able to tell me who’s buried next to my husband. There are no registers or any records of the cemetery.”
She hesitates for a moment. “At first I was tempted to accept it but then I thought to hell with that.
“I’m 81 years old. I won’t be bullied. I’ll lie down next to my husband when I die. That’s my greatest wish. My last wish.”
THE only things on Marthiens’ grave are a granite cross and a vase with two plastic flowers. It breaks her heart that her husband doesn’t even have a proper gravestone, Isabella says.
“Money has always been an issue. That’s why it’s so important to me to be buried next to my husband – it’s the only thing we have left.”
The grave on Marthiens’ left side is still unmarked. Three years later, there’s still nothing to identify who’s buried there.
Contacted for comment, Moqhaka municipality spokesperson Dika Kheswa said they’re unsure what all the fuss is about.
As far as they’re concerned, Isabella has agreed to be buried at her husband’s right side.
“It’s absolutely the municipality’s fault that someone was accidentally buried in Mrs Kruger’s plot in the Steynsrus cemetery,” Kheswa admits.
“We’re very sorry about that and we can understand the frustration she’s feeling, but we agreed to allocate a different grave to her and she was satisfied with the solution.”
Kheswa says there are records for the cemetery but a mistake was made and the records aren’t accurate. The municipality is planning to improve its systems to prevent the same thing from happening again.
Kheswa says it’s not possible to exhume the person in plot 99, as the person’s identity is unknown and exhumations can’t occur without the permission of the deceased’s family.
Meanwhile, Isabella has vowed to fight to the grave if necessary.
“I’ve already lost my Marthiens,” she says. “I refuse to lose my resting place next to him too.”
‘They told me, Tannie, you should just lie on top of him’