Reflections on the last journey of my grandmother

My grandmother passed away this morning, Thursday 30 June 2005, three weeks shy of her 93rd birthday. Born in 1912, she had witnessed both World Wars of the last century, had seen the rise - and the fall - of apartheid, the rise of democracy and was troubled by what she saw as a moral decay in society. She had lived a long and fruitful life and had seen her children have children and them in turn have children. And today she was surrounded by them - not all of them, because many of us were scattered around the country, around the globe.

Her passing marks the end of a generation,but also the end of a connection to an era before my time and one I had wanted to capture with a family tree, to capture memories of that time - and had not gotten around to doing. Now it remains yet another thing on my to-do list, but moved up to the must-do section.

I was struck by how peaceful she looked all clean and dressed in white, curled up in a foetal position, her head resting gently on a pillow, a softness in her face. A far cry from the frail body of recent times and rather recalling the regal matriarch who ruled over the Marcus clan for all my memory. She would hold court at the numerous family gatherings, serenely surveying the scene and the myriad conversations happening at those all-too noisy occasions. More recently, confined to a wheelchair, she would delight in having visitors, grateful for a new face to talk to - most often about travelling. She loved to travel - and her favourite journey was the pilgrimage to Mecca - a journey she had made seven or eight times at least once with each of her children.

As she lay there, beneath a poster depicting the Kaabah, I thought to myself that she must be pleased to be making a journey again, that this time it would not be she who is left behind asking me when I would be travelling again and to what destination. This in fact was a journey for which she had been preparing herself for most of her life. Perhaps that is where the gentle smile on her face stemmed from - she was going home, a request she had made a few times in the last two weeks. Only it was perhaps not her home in the Bo-Kaap overlooking Cape Town that she was referring to.

I also thought of the last hajj of the Prophet, the year in which he died --
Al youma akmaltu la kum dinakum, wa atmamtu alayka ni'ymatee, wa radheetu lakum, islama dina. Truly today for her had been perfected her religion, and upon her had been made complete her gifts and she had chosen for herself Islam as her way of life.

No [one] is an island entire of itself
Everyone is a part of the mainland, a piece of the continent,
Any [one]'s death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind
Hence never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee


The huge outpouring of grief visible in the silences, on each tear-stained cheek, in every choked-up voice, all the petty internecine squabbles set aside for the day as we came to mourn her passing but also to celebrate her life and pay tribute to the impact on the community that her life as Haji Zainab Marcus nee Saban had.

Surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, there could probably be no greater gift for her than that her great-grandchildren's light voices read surah Yasin and Al-Mulk for her.

I thought of the power of ritual in the healing process - the ritual of grieving the passing of a loved one. Crying and knowing sadness is an important emotional release for it allows us to let go, to bid farewell, to gain some closure. So too do the rituals surrounding the burial - the specific readings, the words, the actions. Because we all know what they are, we know what is coming and somehow doing them in a communal way lessens the pain of having to say good-bye by oneself. One can take comfort in the shared anguish. I was particularly struck by the surprising tenderness of my older male cousins and uncles, the outpouring of grief on the wet cheeks of these usually brusque men testimony to the depth of their (often hidden) capacity for emotion.

Finally, at the cemetery, as the sun was setting over Devil's Peak and the chill wintry wind nipped at my ears, she was finally laid to rest, a veil covering the hole hiding her closest relatives making her space as comfortable for her as possible. As the Arabic recitation and prayers for her and all of those who have left this mortal plane before her drew to a close, the freshly turned earth and fresh cut flowers marking where she lay, a new chapter in her existence began as the last of us walked 40 steps away..