“Huh?” I replied, intellectually.
“What’s a Linny?” she repeated in her ‘I guess he’s hard of hearing’ voice. I saw that she was gazing down at my right foot (something that I’m fairly accustomed to) and realised what she meant at the same time that my son said: “It’s what my Dad always called my Mom”.
A look of enlightenment crossed her face.
“So, you’re Patrick’s Dad?” she said to me, proving that deductive reasoning is alive and well and living in hamburger-flippers at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees.
“Yes”, I replied. “Linny and I were married for 33 years.” I was getting better at this. These days, there were times when I actually managed to talk about Linda without crying too obviously.
“So, why ‘Linny’? Why a tat? What happened?”
My son came to my rescue by starting to explain that Linda had died of brain cancer the previous year.
“Gosh” interjected S——, “that’s hectic!”
I wasn’t sure whether, by hectic, she meant amazing, sad, annoying, or just the traditional frantic, so I let her comment pass un-remarked.
Patrick continued telling the story of how Linda’s initial annoying headaches—just a low-grade discomfort—had suddenly escalated into a total disaster; how within four weeks of diagnosis, a massive (yes, massive—the size of a squash ball) glioblastoma in the back left quadrant of her brain had destroyed her life. He told of the agony of wanting to be with his Mom, but still having to conduct business one-and-a-half thousand kilometres away; of travelling to Cape Town by bus in order to avoid the risk of driving himself while he felt such a sense of urgency and anger; of finding that I had been falling asleep in the car when stopped at traffic lights on the way home from the hospital.
Of knowing that there was no hope…
It was the first time that I had heard the story told; hitherto, it had always been me telling it. I revisited with him the unutterable misery of realising that Linda’s was a hopeless case; of trying to encourage his younger sister, who needed to come home from 12 000 kilometres away in Eastern Europe; of breaking the news of Linny’s death to my eldest daughter while she was driving along a Gauteng motorway. He spoke of the whole family and many friends coming together to share our grief when I conducted Linda’s memorial service.
Yes, I admit it; I did cry, but it wasn’t too obvious because the Oudtshoorn skies had started to drizzle in sympathy.
“Wow! Awesome!”
Pause… Gosh S——, is that all you can say?
“But, what about the tat?”
I wasn’t going to get away with it. I would have to offer an explanation, however inadequate.
Having been brought up in the baby-boomers generation, I had been raised to believe that tattoos were—generally—reminders of the stupidity of men in the armed forces who got drunk to escape the horrors—or boredom—of war, and who had woken up the next morning—hung-over—with graphic representations of anchors or naked women on their arms, or snakes disappearing into their navels; definitely not socially acceptable.
In my later years, tattoos re-emerged as ‘cool’, but my upbringing, while allowing me to tolerate this ‘aberration’ in others, made me steadfastly aver that it was not for me.
Imagine my children’s surprise when, the day after Linda’s death, I announced that I intended to get her name tattooed on my foot! I’m not sure why I made this decision, but it just seemed right. Perhaps Patrick summed it up well in what he said to Kathleen (my eldest daughter) the day after Linny died.
“Yesterday two traumatic events happened in my life: firstly, my Mom died, and, secondly, my Dad announced that he was going to get a tattoo. I’m not sure which one traumatised me more”.