Living without Liesl

Living without Liesl

Douwleen Bredenhann

Tafelberg

This book is dedicated to Liesl Bredenhann

You couldn’t tell your own story, Liesl-love,

I had to do it

for you, for us

and

for everyone

who may come to need

this book

Stephanie and Rosanne,

I am so grateful that I don’t have to

write a book about you.

Your lives unfold before my eyes, not in my mind or on the

monitor of a computer.

I can share in most things that happen to you.

Prologue

On 26 February 1988, the relatively uncomplicated lives of the unsuspecting Bredenhann family of Kimberley were brutally and violently disrupted.

In the early evening, just after supper, the unmentionable happened to our eldest daughter, Liesl. On a mild Friday evening, just a month before her ninth birthday, she was murdered in our own back garden. Our hearts shattered into a myriad of fragments. Nothing would ever be the same again.

More than twenty years have passed, and the exact sequence of events remains a mystery. It was still light outside. One minute Liesl was a carefree little girl, feeding her puppy. In the next ten to fifteen minutes she was attacked, and her beating heart was smothered into silence. Her clothes were concealed in a hollow between the two walls separating us from our neighbours, and she was tossed aside on the cement slab near her beloved swing like a broken doll.

This tragedy infringed upon the life of every member of our family. It happened in the days before incidents of murder and mayhem were reported in South African newspapers on a daily basis; the days when children were carefree, and played at their parents’ homes, secure in the knowledge that they were safe. Parents did not lie awake at night, worrying about the safety of their children in the confines of their own homes and gardens.

The following account represents my personal experience of the tragedy. The sequence of events is recorded as accurately as possible, though it may occasionally vary slightly from the way things happened at the time. I may have added or omitted incidents that other role players regard as unimportant or important, or they may have experienced the events differently.

The death of a beloved child is enormously painful and quite unfathomable. When it happens so brutally, it is even more difficult to accept. How could this have happened to our child?

Parents have limited options about what to do next. Certain basic actions have to be taken. As soon as these have been completed, they begin the painful process of carrying on with their lives without their beloved child. On paper, it sounds simple – possible, even. There are books available that take one through the mourning process step by step.

But reality isn’t nearly as logical or uncomplicated. To mourn is an intensely personal experience. Everyone who is affected deals with it in his or her own way.

In search of consolation and a measure of solidarity, I read every available book written by parents on the death of their children. I was able to identify with each of these accounts only up to a point. Most of the children in question had been the victims of vehicle accidents or terminal disease. I do not mean to imply that their deaths were any less traumatic to their parents, or that parents are able to accept and come to terms with such a death more easily. But the images we were carrying around in our minds at the time were different from those parents’ memories. I needed to read that somewhere other parents were also struggling with the painful legacy of a killer who had used their child for his own sick purposes and then simply discarded her.

I could not find anything like that anywhere. My frustration gradually turned into the realisation that I would have to write about it myself, so that others who felt the same need would not have to embark on the same fruitless search. It was a difficult decision, and it took a long time to strip away my defences until I was ready to open up about things that felt like sacrilege to divulge.

The writing process itself was a Herculean task. Sometimes it was extremely emotional and personal, and at times reliving the events made it almost unbearable to continue. Still, I never doubted that I would complete the task, so I simply carried on writing. Some people openly questioned the wisdom of putting myself through the entire painful process again. I didn’t expect them to understand. There is a mysterious force that drives one after the life of one’s child has been summarily cut short. To me it was a privilege to be able to cope with the writing myself. Every word honours the child we will never be able to hold in our arms again.

Telling this story is even more relevant now than two decades ago, because the violent death of a child is no longer a rare occurrence in our country. It now happens quite frequently. Each of those children has parents, siblings, grandparents, other family members and friends – people who have to try to make sense of something that their minds find impossible to accept.

It was high time that someone took up the challenge of mapping out the way forward for the parents of a murdered child. This book doesn’t come up with a magic formula or mitigate the facts. It describes frankly the gruesome incident and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the long road ahead.

There are no easy throughways. Some obstacles I was able to overcome in the end, but others left me scarred for life. Not for want of trying, but simply because it was the best I could do at the time.

Initially I considered protecting the identities of the people who feature in this narrative, but after careful consideration I decided against it. The murder of our defenceless daughter reduced her to a number in the country’s crime statistics. She herself could never tell us what had happened to her. At eight years of age she was forced to enter the valley of the shadow of death, alone and afraid. We are proud of her and of our connection with her. This publication is a final tribute to her, and it would be inappropriate to send it out into the world using assumed names.

For personal reasons, I did however decide not to reveal the true identities of the killer and his parents. They are referred to as Piet Strydom, Leana Strydom and Thomas Strydom.

Life is beautiful

Darling child,

I open the floodgate to memory lane,

empowering your being before you were slain;

too much to be said’s still embodied in pain,

although your uniqueness will always remain.

28/03/2009

Dear Liesl

Today we commemorate your birthday. In an ideal world you would have been celebrating with us, your birthday cake ablaze with thirty candles. Instead, I propose a toast to you across the ether, composed from the rich treasure of memories you left behind.

I believe you know what this book is about. On these pages I will speak of your death and the virtually impossible process of making peace with it.

There used to be a time when thoughts of you never filled our hearts with sorrow. For one month short of nine years you were a radiant, sparkling part of our lives, and your presence was a flash of joy and laughter.

I was able to learn a lot from you, even before your birth. Every new sensation, every milestone a mother experiences through her unborn baby, you and I arrived at together. And we had our jobs cut out during that mutual endeavour in Pretoria’s Marifont Hospital, when you finally entered the world.

Like most new moms and dads we counted and examined your fingers and toes. Everything was perfect. You had Daddy’s toes and had made sure that we would know your hands among thousands of others: the little finger on your left hand was ever so slightly crooked, and on the outside of each pinkie you had the same little bump that I inherited from Grandma Rosaal.

You were a delicate baby, with thick, dark hair that formed a distinctive little curl on your head, even in the nursing home. At visiting hours, when the grannies and grandpas came to see the babies behind the glass pane, you were often the only one who was awake. The sister would lift you up and you would look around you with wise little eyes, blinking slowly. The grannies ooh-ed and aah-ed, while their own grandchildren slept blissfully. One evening, just before visiting hours were over, your godparents, Marieta and Jackie van Schalkwyk, broke the rules and sneaked in to see you. As if you had been expecting their visit, you were sitting in the sister’s arms, bolt upright and full of curiosity. Even at that tender age, you enchanted people and attracted their attention.

When Grandma Rosaal came to visit, the two of you formed an immediate bond. During your first few nights at home you slept so peacefully that at times she wondered whether you were all right. She would bend over you, holding her cheek close to your lips, so that she could feel your warm breath on her skin.

We moved to our first house in Faerie Glen when you were only a month old. The unpacking had hardly begun when Grandma Rina, Grandpa Flip, Lauraine and Marinda arrived for a visit. They simply couldn’t wait any longer to meet you. It was such a privilege to decorate your very own room in the new house. Not that you were impressed with it at all. You refused to sleep there. Actually, you refused to sleep anywhere at all during those first few months.

One evening when you were two months old, I had fallen asleep with you lying on my chest. It was one of the few ways in which we could snatch a few shreds of sleep. I woke from a smacking, sucking noise near my face. Your greedy little mouth had latched on to the end of my nose, and you were doing your best to force milk from it!

Despite your milk allergy and the sleep dramas, you flourished. When we went shopping at the Hyperama, people often stopped me to find out whether the sleeping child in the baby buggy was real, or a doll.

As newly-weds with a brand new house, we had very little money, but you had three smart dresses for special occasions. I dressed you in one of them when I went back to my former workplace for the first time to show you off. It was quite a procession to the city centre, after which I still had to lug the whole caboodle from the parking lot to the Department of Statistics.

One of my colleagues, Lorraine du Pré, was quite besotted with you. She offered to baby-sit one evening, so that Daddy and I could recharge our grown-up batteries in a restaurant. You were five months old, and we knew you were in the best possible hands, but still we couldn’t relax. Instead of enjoying the rare opportunity to share good food and much-needed time alone, we kept wondering whether you weren’t missing us too much. Of course you were absolutely fine; we were the ones doing all the missing.

Moms are like hens, who believe that the best place for their chicks is nestled safely against their bodies. Sometimes I wasted time worrying about trivialities; at other times there was reason enough to be worried. Sometimes I rushed all the way from Faerie Glen into the city when you had a dangerously high fever that just wouldn’t come down. As soon as we set foot in the surgery, there would be no sign of the fever and, with typical infant behaviour, you’d be the picture of health.

When you were eighteen months old, Daddy’s university roommate, Eljo Smit, came to introduce his young bride to us. Denice was a few years our junior and impressed me no end with her good instincts with small children. She almost knitted her fingers to the bone to finish the green dungarees that were a special gift for you.

Eljo and Denice are still among our closest friends. A great dog lover, she has had more than one four-legged child over the years. I often think of the holiday we spent in Gordon’s Bay in 1987, when Stephanie embarrassed you with a comment she made. It was a few years before the birth of Eljo and Denice’s son Charl. We were returning to our chalet after spending time with them in Somerset West. In the car you remarked on the fact that Denice and Eljo were childless. With the wisdom of a five-year-old, Stephanie whispered audibly in your ear: I think Auntie Denice can only have puppies. For a moment there was silence. Amused, I glanced at Daddy, wondering whether I should step in. It wasn’t necessary. You rolled your eyes, shook your head and answered: It doesn’t work that way, Stephanie; human mommies can’t have puppies!

You began to speak at an early age, pronouncing the l at the end of a word as oh. A borsel (brush) was a borsoh, and you called yourself Liesoh. My name was Dawleen. Actually, the full title you created for me was: The mommy Dawleen.

Unlike today, there were no designer birthday parties for children in those days. Most mommies baked the birthday cakes themselves. I tried my best to copy all the best-liked examples, with varying measures of success. The dolly cake, fairy cake, train cake and a few others turned out reasonably well, but the one that caused me endless problems was the mother duck and ducklings I made for your second birthday. The idea was to prop everything up by means of excessive amounts of icing-sugar glue, which was supposed to set after a while. The fact that it was a sweltering day didn’t help matters along. The butter in the icing stayed runny, and the infernal duck mother kept falling over, no matter what I tried. All through the night I struggled with a duck that wanted to lie down at all costs. At five in the morning I tore myself away from her, or she would certainly have landed in the dustbin. That afternoon, shortly before the little friends were due to arrive, I gave it one last try, and, sure enough, she stood up long enough for us to take the photographs and for you to blow out the candles.

As a baby and toddler you had a number of special friends. They were the children of friends Daddy and I had made at school, university and in the army and with whom we had remained in contact over the years. Your very first friend in Pretoria was Danie,