Johannesburg - I learned a lesson on immortality from a security guard I met at Klipspringer Slaghuis in Mokopane, Limpopo.
My two cousins, who are brothers, and I went to the land of our bones to see our grandparents, a lovely couple of 99 and 96-years-old.
Though Papa and Mma have amnesia, they never forget one another. Their minds locked and synchronized in a realm of their own. In the existence of an ancient love captured in a capsule.
They also have a beautiful ritual they practice every day. It is reminiscent of a picture they took in the 1950s under a veranda. This picture forms part of a tapestry of salt print images scattered along the oak shelf headboard of their bed.
Three times a day, waiting for food, they sit opposite each other at a small table in their bedroom, as they did in that picture.
Like clockwork, my uncle, their last-born child of three who is in his 60s, puts food on that table.
They don't need him for much else, they are as strong and healthy as humans of their age can be.
Mma takes the longest showers I have ever come across.
Outside of themselves, Papa and Mma only remember their daughter, Lali. The mother of my two cousins. When Mma speaks with Lali on the phone, she says there are boys who everyday cook for them, clean the house and leave. Of course, there are no “boys”, just my uncle. Every time he leaves their room they forget him. Every time he returns, his face is new.
But Papa and Mma are grateful for the “boys”. “They are kind.”
In hindsight, by going into their bedroom all together to greet them, my two cousins and I perpetuated the myth of “boys” who everyday cook, clean, and leave their compound.
Mma is more animated. When we greeted and told them we are the bloodline of Serumula, her face shone gentler than the sun peeking through their west-facing window that Saturday morning.
They are no strangers to breathtaking sunsets.
It is as though they live in a resort at the Garden of Gethsemane, across the Kidron Valley on the Mount of Olives, where the air smells freshest, where the stars glitter brighter, and all they have is each other.
The older of my cousins, Mologadi, was on Sunday flying out for his work tour in the United States as a convener at Private Clubs. We visited Papa and Mma to get blessings from God and her husband.
We spent our Friday night there sitting out on the veranda, drinking Bumbu rum and smoking Ashton cigars. It was the following day before we left when I met the security guard at Klipspringer Butchery. We went to get supplies and I stood outside taking pictures. The guard asked if I was working. I said yes. We had a chat and he said: “If we had known the suffering here [on earth] we would not have come. Immortality [life after death] can be a curse, or a blessing if spent with a soul mate”.