Looking for me

Mom would arrive at the Johannesburg General Hospital in Hillbrow early on a Monday morning and spend the week having her cancer treatments. She would immediately look forward to the friday morning when she would be fetched to go back home to Vanderbijlpark.

Her diary notes are open on my desk and I  notice that the first thing I am looking for is references to myself and my siblings.

I have been confused about this period in my life and for decades I have told people that my Mom spent 6 months in hospital, when in fact it was 6 weeks.

I have held guilt too and a feeling of not showing up for her during this time in her life.
I wonder if I am being hard on my 18 year old self, no car, certainly no cellphone and also in hindsight I know that I adjusted poorly to the freedom of leaving home.

I have mapped out her notes in this table and I love the entry from Wednesday 7th August 1974, I have a sense of a garden and it seems that visit gave her some comfort.

Date:	Finding myself in Mom’s diary notes. The 6 weeks in Hillbrow Hospital 1974.	Visitors that she mentions
Monday 15th July	Sharon stayed till 7.30. I think it was a little to long for her she looked quite tired, but she managed to do quite a bit of work on her maths notes.
Tuesday 16th July	Selwyn Marx called to see me at lunchtime. He sat and watched me eat it was very nice to see him. Christopher and Sharon came to see me and we had a good laugh about all the shouting nonsence ( a story she wrote about been woken up at night by someone screamimg which made her scream in turn)	Joyce
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July		Cora called this afternoon and left at 4pm.
Friday 19th July
Monday 22nd July		Cora called this afternoon
Tuesday 23rd July	Well it is our daughter’s birthday. It is hard to believe we have a child of 18. I am looking forward to seeing her tonight and giving her the beautiful ring from your Mother. I know she will treasure it all her life.  By the way I managed to finish the crotchet cloth I was doing for Sharon so I can give it to her today for her birthday as well.	Dad, Joyce and Cora are here this afternoon.
Wednesday 24th July	Oh! Chip Sharon was so thrilled and full of life last night. She was bubbling over with fun. Madam bought all her birthday cards and presents, plus her blouses etc for me to see. All the ladies in the ward sang ‘Happy Birthday” to her as she walked in. It was quite touching.
Thursday 25th July		Dad and Cora’s mom came to visit this afternoon.
Friday 26th July
Monday 29th July		Cora called this afternoon, won’t see her till Thursday
Tuesday 30th July	Sharon, Chris and Selwyn Marx called this evening
Wednesday 31st July
Thursday 1st August
Friday 2nd August
Monday 5th August	Chris and Sharon came just after six and stayed till 7.30. Was waiting from 7.00pm to hear you on the phone
Tuesday 6th August
Wednesday 7th August	Sharon walked here this afternoon and stayed till 4pm We took a stroll in the garden and she went to the Café and bought us each a Fanta Orange. It was very nice sitting under the trees and I felt as if all the cobwebs were blown away.
Thursday 8th August
Friday 9th August
Monday 12th	Had no visitors today.
Tuesday 13th	I am anxiously waiting to hear about Clive and cannot wait to see you tomorrow evening.
Wednesday 14th	It was lovely seeing Inel for a few minutes yesterday afternoon.
Thursday 15th	I am so excited and thrilled about Clive. Hell he has really done well for himself. What lucky parents we have been so far.
Friday 16th August
Tuesday 20th	I felt in no mood to write anything yesterday and am reading Thursday’s notes it just goes to show how quickly one can be disappointed. I am afraid after your phone call last night and Clive speaking to me I really had a fit of depression and just sat and cried my heart out.  I guess this is just another blow I have to get over, I am so terribly sorry that it has happened and I feel it might have been avoided had I not been away for so long. As you know Chip I think the world of Clive and so want him to be strong in character like you. Sharon and Betty came to visit me Monday afternoon.	Lorraine and Barry (monday)
Wednesday 21st	I have got over the fit of ‘morbes’ I had on Monday but you know the reason why I had them.	I had no visitors yesterday (Tuesday)
Thursday 22nd August	….last entry….

The Anthurium sketch

Recently a special friend, who is grappling with the grief of losing both her parents this year, asked a question:  'how I would know that my mother was with me?'

As I was looking through the back pages of Mom's diary from her two months at the Johannesburg General Hospital in Hillbrow, I was flawed to see her pencil sketch of an anthurium. 
Yesterday Fred had popped out to buy a plant for a house-warming gift. 
An anthurium.

This same friend wrote about her questioning left-brain suppressing her right-brain. I understand.
How wonderful it would be to believe that my mother is with me.

Hillbrow Hospital, Hillbrow, Johannesburg

A familiar Hillbrow sign from the '70s

I would have walked from Braamfontein across to Hillbrow to see Mom in one of the buildings, on the site bounded by Hospital, Esselen, Klein and Smit streets, which formed the core of the old Johannesburg Hospital site.

Mom sketching a map, Klein Street between Smit and Esselen

Mom does not describe her environment but writes about her visits to the X-ray department as well as to radiology. 

Sketch from the notepad

I found this wonderful photo while trawling the net and I can almost picture her, petite and scared on her way in a wheelchair...

Visit to X-ray Dept at 9.20am

 She pays attention, takes in all the details, records her thoughts and shares then with Dad.

Radio therapy at 2.30pm

I have enjoyed doing some reading this morning into what has transpired in Hillbrow since these visits to the hospital 40 years ago. 

Background to Hillbrow Hospital:

The Past

The precinct contains one of the finest collections of historic buildings in Johannesburg. It includes buildings to the west of Hospital Street such as the South African Institute for Medical Research building, designed by Herbert Baker and Frank Fleming in 1913, said to be based on Christopher Wren’s designs in Greenwich, London. Close by is the old Wits Medical School designed by A and W Reid and Delbridge in 1920. These buildings represent the work of some of South Africa’s most renowned architects, including Gordon Leith, Herbert Baker and Wilhelm Pabst, attracting the attention of visitors from all over the world.

A Window on Health Care Through the Years

The value of the buildings lies not only in the historic style of their design but also in what they can teach us about the development of health care and technology that has made our present high-tech medicine possible. When the Johannesburg General Hospital was at its peak, it represented cutting-edge medical care and was in the same league as other well-known hospitals around the globe. The precinct has an historical association with countless medical students, doctors and nurses who learned their profession at this teaching hospital.

The same applies to the thousands of Johannesburg residents who received medical treatment there over a period of nearly 100 years.

(Source: http://www.wrhi.ac.za/Pages/HHP.aspx)

One of the earliest images showing Johannesburg Hospital building. Picture: Barnett Collection / Independent Newspapers Archives

Read more about the development of the Hillbrow Health Precinct.







Here is another interesting link to a blog worth looking at:
http://2summers.net/2011/07/06/saving-buildings-and-lives-in-hillbrow/

A thank you 40 years on

Last year was the 40th reunion of our Matric Class of 1973 from Vaal High School in Vanderbijlpark. I re-eastablished contact with some of my friends from those school years as I had lost touch over the last few decades.

Visitors feature in the diary notes that Mom made during her time in the Cancer Ward. 

I was surprised and humbled to see that both Selwyn Marx and Chris de Villiers, two school friends who were Vice Head and Head Boy of Vaal High, had popped in and seen my mother, sometimes with me and sometimes on their own.

How wonderful.

So last week I dropped both Selwyn and Chris this thank you email:

'I am doing some writing in blog form and have a set of pages from my mother (july -august 1974) when she was in the Hillbrow cancer ward. I have such poor recall of this time and reading her notes is not easy, but so so pleased to see you both are mentioned!

I have copied 2 bits for you both, one is Selwyn visiting her at lunch time and Chris, you coming with me to visit.

So, belated thank you '

From Selwyn:

Hi Sharon

That was a lifetime away! Thanks for the memory. 

From Chris: 

Hope you all well? Sharon, thanks for this –very special!

PS: I also saw Betty for lunch recently, she was my school friend from Vaal High, and I thanked her too for visiting with me and she remembered spending a week with me in Residence in 1974.

A notepad, 40 years later

A small notepad, the paper is yellowing.

My mother is in the Cancer Ward, Johannesburg General Hosiptal, Hillbrow and is creating a diary of events.

The period of the diary pages is July and August 1974, 40 years have gone by.

This is her opening page addressed to my father who she called Chip.

In 1974, I was turning 18, battling to adjust to my first year of university in Johannesburg and was staying in residence; Clive would have been 14, at Vaal High School in Vanderbijlpark; Inel is 7, and at primary school; Doreen turning 4 in the October of that year.

So her 'look after yourself and the kids' is an understatement.

She spent monday to friday having her cancer treatments and weekends back at home, with Dad juggling work, home, the 3 children and the to and fro to see his wife, recovering from her hysterectomy and terrified of the cancer, the treatments and very alone in her ward in Hillbrow.

This is an inflection point in their lives and affects many of the decisions they make going forward.

I will start reading the notes, looking for myself in her writing, as I have such poor recall of this time and trying to understand her journey.

...an endless battle of contrasting memories.

The walk along the beach front road in Kalk Bay, here in the Cape, takes me past the bookshop just before our favourite breakfast spot.

Today's quote from the contemporary Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, on their sandwich board, stopped me mid stride.

The life in the letters project is stirring all sorts of memories, or frequently the lack of memories, for me.

The many voices of the letters feel like contrasting lenses and make for contrasting memories, how apt the notion of an endless battle.

I will attempt a careful navigation and a mindful working with the content.

Birthday Book of Wit and Humour

Inel and I were sleuthing this morning, she is in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia and I am in Cape Town, South Africa. Inel is sending me photos from a little treasure of a book, our Nan's Birthday Book, trying to get some details about our maternal grandparents. 

I do not know much. 

Their birthdays are 29 May for Nellie and 26 February for Pa, he was nick-named Bill, wonder what the H stands for?

Nan's Birthday Book which is with Inel.

This is wonderful.
An entry for Mom's birthday in the book, this is earliest bit of her handwriting that we have unearthed.
107 Vos Street (with spelling corrected) would have been in Sunnyside, Pretoria, her family home before they move to Vanderbijlpark.

The earliest piece of Mom's handwriting from her mother's Birthday Book

An early photo of my mother.