As I write this, you have been dead for more than six years. It sounds like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it. Perhaps that’s because I still think about you every day. You’ve taught me so much, and you continue to do so.
The way you chose to lead your lives has shaped my outlook on the world and it has sculpted and carved who I am, in every way.
Granny, you are an exemplar of what a woman should be: beautiful, brave and, above all, passionate. You joined the African National Congress the day after the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and you never looked back. You went to jail at the age of 24 and were one of the first white women political prisoners in South Africa. In 1964, you, Grandpa and your young children were exiled. Your courage and your commitment to justice at such a young age, in the face of alienation and certain punishment, never ceases to amaze me. You fought the apartheid system with unfaltering conviction, activism and energy.
Decades later, you fought cancer with the same strength of personality. Relentlessly positive, you made it far further than expected. You still died too young, but the fighting spirit that made your life so extraordinary never faltered, even when you were faced with death.
Grandpa, after my dad, you are the man I love most in the world. Your not being here doesn’t change that. Like Granny, you dedicated your life to the struggle against South Africa’s fascist regime and to the liberation of African colonies. Your work as a journalist took you across the continent: you interviewed Nelson Mandela in hiding and then refused to reveal his whereabouts.
After you were exiled, you worked in Kenya and drafted the Socialist opposition party’s manifesto; again, you were expelled. In 1973, you broke the story of the Ethiopian famine to the world. Your life may have been full of conflict and struggle, but you remain the gentlest, loveliest person I have ever known. You loved us all, and loved Granny with a profundity and sincerity that most of us can only aspire to. You took care of her until the end and then you died of a broken heart.
You were both only 70 when you died. But your lives were rich and full and you did more and loved more than most people do in their lifetime. You have taught me what it means to fight for what you believe, to speak up for uncomfortable truths when staying silent would be easier.
You have taught me that every human life is worth as much as the next, and that we have a responsibility to fight for every single one of those lives. Because of you, I understand empathy, I understand struggle and I understand the power that every individual has to change the world.
You also taught me what it is to love another person. Until the very end, you were as in love with each other as a pair of silly teenagers. Your commitment to justice went hand in hand with your commitment to one another, and you faced the world’s problems together, side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder.
I see you both in my dad and my uncles. Their worldliness, eccentricity and intellectual curiosity are a tribute to their bohemian and political upbringing.
You are the architects of our family, and all of us would be lesser people had we not known you. Because of you I have chosen to live my life with bravery, emotion and depth. You may be dead, but you are not gone.
Love always,
Lucy
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