Death, Coffee, Photo Albums

Thursday. A WhatsApp message I knew would come eventually. Ter’s stepfather passed away from liver cancer. A long decline. Pain. It was a slow process, and the end… inevitable, like all those endings we know in advance yet still greet with surprise. Ter was in London when it happened. Within hours, he was on a plane.

We’re in Cape Town now.

When you’re young, death is an idea. A concept. Something that happens to other people—some close, some distant, most grey-haired. But you’re always on the mourning side, never the dying one. At some point, you notice that it’s always there. Death, I mean. Standing behind you and to your sides—one, two, three. It doesn’t pounce. It waits. It gathers. A massive conveyor belt with no emergency stop button. You walk in the opposite direction, side by side with your loved ones on that narrow strip of moving metal. Someone behind you vanishes; someone ahead glances back with unease. And you realise this is what life is—one long conveyor leading us all the same way, and it’s not the way we’re walking.

The funeral was emotional—another predictable thing death brings. Emotions and sniffles. Someone places a hand on someone else’s shoulder. I see people cry, hear the rustle of tissues being drawn from sleeves. I have no idea who is who. All the new faces and names I was introduced to blur in my mind, melting into a quiet hum of grief. The eulogies speak of a man I never fully knew—and still, I miss him.

The comfort is that we’re in Cape Town, Ter’s birthplace—a city of landscapes that make you feel small, and sunsets that remind you time waits for no one. We found an Airbnb on my mother-in-law’s street, and we spend each day with her and by her side. The plan is to be with her so much she eventually tires of us. So these are days of coffee and memories, stories pulled from photo albums that spark a chorus of “remember this?”—as if, by remembering hard enough, we could bring him back to the conveyor belt for just one more moment.

In between, I glance at Ter and quietly scan. You can see he’s in his own zone—it’s taking him time to process it. And me? If that little red hammer they have on trains existed in life, I’d smash a window and leap out. But there’s no little red hammer. So I’m here. Trying to be—for him, for his mum—as much as I can, in whatever way I can, whenever they need.