Here is a tribute to our mom, which I read at her funeral last Wednesday. It is very hard to write about someone in the past tense who was such a pillar of strength in our family, our rock, our shining light when all else seemed dark, our moral compass, our umbilical cord to whom all of us were inextricably linked and who kept us all connected to each other even when we were all scattered around the country and world. It is very hard to write about someone whom you expect to see in every corner of the house and garden, telling us to get out of bed because we are wasting the best part of the day, showing us how to raise our children with love, firmness and respect, how to play and talk to children at their level, telling us to stop losing ourselves in laptops and cell phones and rather communicate with each other, stopping to show us something beautiful she made with found objects like shells or driftwood from the beach, or an arrangement of wild flowers, or the bonsais she so magically nurtured with her own hands, or her precious orchids. Even though her knees and back ached from arthritis, Mom would always be seen in her gumboots digging in her indigenous garden in Pringle Bay and more recently dreaming up plans for her new garden at Leeuwfontein, where she and Mac had just moved into from Durban a week before the fatal accident. It is very hard to write about the big sister to Aunty Carol, Uncle Neville and Claudette, the Barbara who as a little girl was so cute with her mop of golden blonde curls that everyone wanted her to be their flower girl-something she grew quite annoyed with as she her great pleasure was playing five stones, kennekie, skipping, and football in the cosmopolitan Cape Town working class district of Salt River where she and Mac grew up. This straight talking, no nonsense tomboy was Papa Mac’s sweetheart who he met when she was just 14 years old and he was 18, the girl who used to play goalie for the boys’ soccer team, who was the only girl who spent the whole weekend climbing up Table Mountain and camping in the caves with a gang of boys. The girl who blossomed into a gorgeous young woman, who had to leave school in Standard 8, Grade 10, to work at Woolworths in Cape Town as a cashier to help support her family when her father died. Mom’s lack of education did not deter her from pushing all of her children to “get that piece of paper” and we can all say she earned several matric exemptions, degrees and diplomas and is the one person responsible for making us what we are today, a CEO of Gauteng Tourism (Dawn) an MD of Times media, (Michael), an executive chef at Sun City (Peter) and an editor, me. Barb and Mac married at St Luke’s Anglican Church in Salt River in 1957 and soon after moved to Durban from Cape Town as Mac managed to secure a job as an intern at McCord’s Zulu Hospital. Their first two children Dawn and Michael were born here and Barbara shared Dawn’s breast milk with all the other babies in the hospital, unfortunately by the time I was born she had run out and I was bottled fed. For all of us children Dawn born in 1958, Michael born in 1960, Heather in 1964 and Peter in 1967 our mom was always there for us through thick and thin (sitting through the night with Michael after he was kicked into a coma during a fight at school, talking to him about Manchester United players and scores to keep him conscious, driving Dawn to and from Pietermaritzburg where she studied Fine Art to Durban every week, helping Peter learn his ABC’s through writing with his fingers with spaghetti and rice, encouraging him to read through providing him with car magazines, always trying to teach Heather to dress properly (an unfinished job-we must admit) and of course encouraging me to express myself through writing poetry and to always remember to campaign for the poor in my newspaper editing. It brings tears to my eyes to write about our mom and grandmother in the past tense, but through the tears and heartache and terrible pain that we all feel we need to pay tribute to a great woman who made all of us become what we are today because of the values she instilled in us. The most important lesson she taught us is revealed in the United Nations nature of our family-we come from all shades of the rainbow-a family that defies everything that apartheid ever tried to impose on us. Mom taught us that the colour of your skin is not important, it’s what inside that counts, that we are not inferior nor superior to anyone on the basis of skin colour. She was also a defender of the downtrodden and the underprivileged who had a fine tuned sense of justice. She was not just a mother to her children and grandmother to her grandchildren she also devoted most of her life to ensure that children who were abandoned and orphaned were given the nurturing, sustenance and education she felt was every child’s right. Mom devoted over 40 years of her life to St Thomas Home for children as a volunteer and then later as Principal. It was for the love of all children, particularly the destitute, that Barb fought against the crooked and heartless bureaucrats who valued power and red tape more than a child’s chance at a future. During apartheid she took on “verkrampte” officials at Child Welfare, Coloured Affairs and the National Party as well as officials in our new democracy, and all kinds of religious hypocrites who she felt spent more time in churches, mosques and temples than doing good deeds for fellow humans. Our feisty Mom was also part of a formidable group of women from Sydenham, in Durban, among them Elaine Fuller and Jeannie Noel, who took to the streets and even kidnapped a politician, in their campaign against forced removals from Villa Road. Barb’s beloved grandchildren Nikki, Emily, Sophie, Brandon-Lee, Jack, Nyika, Neo and Kabelo and great grandchild Bayanda were the centre of her universe. For Brandon-Lee Granny “was the most inspirational elder in my childhood-she taught me that life is too short to sit and play on a phone-that we should go out and live life with friends and family and make memories to tell our children.” For Emily: “Besides making us half decent company to keep by teaching us how to use the loo, not wetting our beds, teaching us how to eat in a fairly decent fashion (we still get food all over our faces as is Robertson tradition) and many other things I’d rather not type (how to clean ones fanny properly), Granny Barb taught us how to care for other people. She showed us how to love unconditionally with her endless patience for all our nonsense and through her kindness even when we deserved the most thorough smack. She was fearsome and yet we were never afraid because we knew nothing we would ever do or say could alter how she felt about us.” As Simon and Garfunkel sang “Here’s to you Barbara Robertson”. Lover, wife, mother, champion of all children, avid gardener, photographer, world traveller and lastly let’s not forget the luckiest darn slot machine player that we ever knew. We are all privileged to have been raised by you.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 11:54:34 +0000
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