Love, loss and the leather jacket

It is a great relief to move from the Visitor of the Week at the local bottle store stage of heartbreak, to the Visiting the Local Cemetery phase. It may seem odd to want to visit a cemetery whilst under emotional duress, but it’s like less Chateau de Nervous System, for goodnessakes and more gentle philosophising. At least you’re still alive.

And Haenertsburg has the most beautiful cemetery among ancient trees at the top of a hill with astonishing views. Views to die for, that’s what the locals say, and everyone visits it all the time: happy hikers, grieving relatives, drunken lovers, curious historians, late night teenagers toking and groping, daytrippers, the heartbroken.

You can sit upon a memorial bench and gaze upon the Iron Crown, highest peak in the district, and the Ebenezer Dam beyond the grasslands. Or you can browse the graves. There lies he who started the first sawmill, she who made the most beautiful garden and once walked all the way to Louis Trichardt when it was still bushveld. Pioneers, adventurers, traders. That one was the last Duke of Atholl, that one over there was once married to that one back there, and that one there. Ja, that caused some kak. Aah that one, head on collision with a kudu; that one, drank herself to an early grave. 

There are beautiful groves of ancient hardwood and exotic pin oaks. Some lavish headstones and moving inscriptions. Around a hedge, remnants of the apartheid days, is the black part of the cemetery; fewer graves, more humble, one just a mound of earth with a chipped blue enamel cup on it.

The cemetery is cared for by a cemetery keeper who lives here; there were reassuring puffs of smoke from his little cottage in the wild flowers. But since I didn’t think he was up for the heartbreak chat, I sat a while with young John Allen, who was taken too young in a car crash. His mom Minki, who owns a coffee shop in the village, gave her late son’s full length black leather Uzzi jacket to his friend Alex. Alex’s mom Nina, my friend, lent it to me last year when I went in search of love in Hawaii.

How fucked up is that? I said to young John. Not that I needed your jacket in Hawaii of course, it being in the middle of the Pacific you know, like surfing and six pack stomachs and lank military okes. I needed it to get through New York en route. It was seriously cold bru, so thanks for your jacket which kept me warm and strong. I had to have the hem taken up by the way, since you were a tall lad. I took it to an upholsterer in Tzaneen.

Anyway, me and your jacket - and you in the pocket of course - hit the coldest winter like evah, but we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and walked the entire length of Central Park, checked out Manhattan and MOMA and the graffiti in Williamsburg. Got lost in damn Bedford Stuyvesant, Bed Stuy, a rough hood. Nighttime, wrong station, no more travel pass or cash. Jeez, blonde hey? Had to walk seventeen blocks and got home with the helpful directions of a Jamaican, a Congolese and a real New Yorker. Even bummed a smoke in a Hispanic spaza shop. I told the oke I was from Jozi, he didn’t argue. Anyway John it’s been lekker talking to you about life, death, heartbreak, damn lies and statistics. Your jacket is back with Alex now.