Life-Changing Moment

Tembi was watching TV when suddenly the phone rang. She picked it up, on the other end of the line was an unfamiliar deep voice.

The man asked if he could speak to Tembi Setso, and before she could answer that it was her speaking, she asked who he was.

The deep voice then replied that it was Dr Smith from Mpumalanga Hospital and that he wanted to talk about Thabo Setso.

Thabo Setso was Tembi’s older brother who had been cast away by their father Mr Setso 20 years ago when Tembi was just 12 years old. Thabo was 19 at the time when he started to care for himself.

Mr Setso had just found out that Thabo was HIV positive after he had contracted the virus from school, trying to help a soccer player who was badly injured. Thabo tried to talk to his father calmly and tried to explain everything when he was asked to pack his belongings and leave their small town house. Tembi cried that night and wished that their mother had not died in that horrible car accident because she thought their mother would have understood.

Twenty years have now passed without a word from Thabo. When Tembi got the phone call, she was brought to a standstill.The doctor told Tembi to make her way to Mpumalanga Hospital, which was 70 km from Cape Town where she lived with her husband and two daughters.

The drive brought a lot of thoughts to Tembi, she thought of how her brother was doing, if he was dead or maybe alive and whether he ever forgave her father for what he had done.

Mpumalanga Hospital was a big hospital with a lot of flowers. Tembi got to the reception and asked for Dr Smith. He was a tall, dark man with a well-built body. Tembi and Dr Smith made their way to a small private room and on the bed, lay a dark-skinned man who looked 60 years old.

If Tembi had not looked on the bed properly she would have thought that there was no one. The bed looked like it was neatly made.

Tembi made her way to the bed slowly and put her handbag on a chair next to it. She could not believe her eyes, the man laying there was her own brother, Thabo. Dr Smith explained that Thabo had full blown AIDS. Her heart hurt as if it had just been ripped out of her chest, she burst into tears and as they started flowing down her cheek, she felt the doctor’s arm rest on her shoulder. The tears started flowing uncontrollably faster then.

Thabo slowly opened his eyes and saw his crying sister standing next to the hospital bed. Thabo too started crying and found difficulty in talking. He uttered some words, but they could barely be heard.

He finally asked about his father and Tembi broke the news that he had died 10 years back due to cancer. Tembi asked for forgiveness, and before she could finish her sentence, he told her that she had done nothing wrong.

Tembi went back the following day with her husband and children, just to learn that Thabo had died that morning. Tembi was sad and unsure of what to do, so she burst into tears. Even though she would have loved for her brother to have lived a bit longer, she knew that it was time for him to go, but she was glad that she got to see him just before he died.

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