Carla Gericke

It’s been two weeks since Ma passed away.

Thank you to all who reached out with condolences, sent flowers, and to all our family, dispersed across the world–South Africa, America, Australia, and Canada–a special thanks for the shared memories and photos. I look forward to connecting more at Madalein Gericke‘s celebration of life in May.

Of all the great photos I received of my effortlessly beautiful mother, I love this one of her lounging in her reddish-pink shirt above the most. (I feel like she would judge me right now for being too lazy to figure out the exact shade, like an oil painter might. lol)

This photo represents three generations of South Africans: my mother and her brother, Schalk, his wife Elizabeth, and her mother, Tannie Mimi, who, as a good friend of my Ouma, always played a role in my life, and me, in 1988, in my vintage store white dress with the handkerchief hem. I lost my virginity in that dress.

This is next to the pool at our home in Colbyn, where summers were spent swimming, braaing, drinking, arguing, loving, laughing, and living.

My mother had a hard life for someone so fortunate. Her stroke changed her, but her sense of humor and spark remained until the very the end. For that we were lucky.

Right after she passed, before my sister called me, a huge bird landed right in my eyesight as I was pensively staring out the window trying to process the reality of her impending death.

I believe she was coming to say goodbye, and now I will always see her in all the birds, which means she is forever around me.