Life has a way of intervening with life. Sixteen students are arrested after police say that orders to clear the area are not followed. Stun grenades and rubber bullets are used to keep the students off the street where they are not permitted. Three seminarians had been observing the march, but with the use of the grenades they ran toward campus and were stopped and arrested. None of the three were the athletes who play soccer and imitated the toi-toi of the marchers. One was over 30 and the other two I would not consider dangerous to butterflies. They are released and calls go to a wife and familes that they are all right.
Word about my uncle is that he had had a stroke. The Hodgkins Lymphoma that we had shared at different times in our lives had not gone into remission, but had lingered in his bone marrow and had taken a strong foothold. I don’t know if he had quit smoking, but it couldn’t have helped. His left side affected, he could not communicate, so questions from hospital staff were related to how aggressively to treat him. So Dawn is left with trying to communicate with my two cousins and let them know what is happening and to try to see if he had a lawyer in Oakland who had advised him about final arrangements. He had asked for our SSI numbers a few years back as he said to get ready for the inevitable. I had called him before leaving to let him know we were coming out in July.
After a ten hour drive to Limpopo, there are no messages, before we can eat dinner, load sharing takes place, the power goes off. The power company is unable to meet all the requirements of the country’s energy needs. So the sermon for Sunday remains unfinished. Sleep calls.
On Thursday at 4:30 I awake and decide to call home. Dawn is in the midst of writing an email to inform me that Melvin Stewart has died peacefully while in the care of the doctors and nurses. My cousins have not yet connected and she awaits the return of a call from his landlord. Having been through the details with my great aunt, my aunt, and planning with my mother, the list of questions comes quickly about next steps, including a Plan A that he might have formulated. Not knowing my uncle to be a demonstratively religious man, we formulate a plan B, which is wrapped around my return and a cremation now, but we await word from others before we act. Traveling back from South Africa is not now a part of the plan. It is amazing the way life can change how we think and how we operated on the spur of the moment. A Blessed Friday, that we call good.
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