Whimsy and Flora Rane

Luky;
FIFTY THREE years ago this year I was expecting my eldest child while working in the mail order department of a large Johannesburg firm.

One of my colleagues was a widow in her late sixties; Mrs Flora Rane, who struck me as a most knowledgeable, sensible woman.
She was attractive, immaculately groomed and beautifully spoken.

"Is it really so painful to have a child?" I asked her once.
She hastened to dispel my fears.
"My dear, not at all.
Until half an hour before my first child's delivery, my husband, the midwife and I were playing bridge."



Because I found her so sensible, her reassurances convinced me and considerably reduced my anxiety.
When my baby was coming and playing cards was the last thing on my mind it was too late to reproach my colleague.

Twelve years later I worked for a spell at Welkom library and a Mr Rane came in with his books.
I asked whether he had ever met Mrs Flora Rane.
His face lit up.
"She was my mother," he said.
It emerged that, although Mrs Rane had died in the interim, she had left life with as much panache as she had lived it.

At the age of 72, she had emigrated to Canada, taken Canadian nationality, changed her religion and taken to the ice and snow of her new country like a duck to water.

I liked Mr Rane because he reminded me of his mother and because he had the kind of manners one would have expected from the son of such a woman.
He died in 1990 at the age of 75.
When I visited his widow, she told me about the good relationship they had shared and the happiness he had brought her.
He was his parents' eldest child, she said.

As I listened to her, my mind went back to the time his mother was telling me about the birth of her firstborn and how she, her husband and the midwife had been playing bridge until half an hour before his arrival.
Suddenly I felt that life with its pain and hardships is as a drop in the ocean compared to the glory of eternity.

At the risk of sounding whimsical in a way Flora Rane would have deplored, I must admit I couldn't help wishing that the three people who welcomed her son into this life had also awaited him on the shores of eternity and helped him to ease the uncertainty of his second birth with the comfort of their reassuring presence.


*Names have been changed