Today 6 years ago I lost my best friend since childhood.... Fitting to Hein's personality he left us on Human Rights day. Strangely in the same hospital ward in Kimberley that he was born...Like an old elephant bull returning home after his last journey... Hein was never a person you would just like you would either absolutely adore him or hate his guts...He was always true to his core if he smiled his whole being smiled....But heaven help us if it was his drama queen day he would pout and smirk with the same guesto....
Not a day has passed that memories of him flow through me...It would be the fall of a leaf ,the smell of incense,the sound in a song,the lines in someones face,or a little gecko running for the sun...He filled his 38 years with so much beauty and joy to those who loved him...I carry him inside me and is so much richer to have had him in my life....
Very few of us is fortunate to have a friend who has been around their whole life...Hein and myself were inseparable since childhood...I would play with his Corgi metal cars and he adored my Barbies....Usually at the end of the day when one of us had to go home it ended in a huge screaming match between us and our parents..And many promises that we can play again the next day.
We just loved one another so purely beautifully,we would kiss and hug and hold each other as little kids and heaven help the one who tried to separate us..I would recite poetry and he would draw. In school we always shared a bench usually for the first day of the school year till the teacher discover our love for debates with one another... He would teach me how to draw faces and i would help him get history and geography facts in his head....
In High school we drifted as he was part of the in-crowd while I did the culture stuff like choir and Media centre prefect... But we would still dice each other home in the afternoon after school on our motorcycles...Occassionally we would debate History in class and he would try and outdo me..Yet we attended the same church and furiously debated religious issues with our Minsiter in conformation class and when on to teach Sunday school together. In our own way we still shared a deep connection in a akward teenage way.
After school we reconnected through a mutual friend and again were inseparable... When we were together it was as time stood still for us and we were in our own special place where everything was possible and we could solve the world's problems over a Wellington & Coke or the kickass Harvey Wallbangers that would completely paralyse you...The one thing about Hein was where he was there was always laughter....
As I sit here the pranks and fun and happy times we played play through my mind like a movie on a slow forward,
- Pancakes baked with Wellington Brandy as the most important ingredient,
- him driving his father's monster F100 lefthand truck Elton's "Im still standing" blaring full force.
- Cocktail nights at the Int where we had to help one another across the main road.
- Sitting on Sunday mornings drinking Herbal tea listening to Radio Lotus till we both got a craving for his Tandoori chicken and incense.
- Us painting making mobiles always making stuff and drinking pots of tea except an saturday afternoons when we really got creative hehehe....
- My Friday dinner parties in the courtyard @ Cara's house with him arriving nonchalant with an Italian adonis who should not speak a word giving away his lack of intelligence.
- Walks on the beach of Keimouth and Gonubie....
- Discussion on the merits of Geroniomus Bosch and Salvidor Dali..
- Hein could hang a picture of the Voortrekker museum next to a Tretchichoff
I miss him everyday more and more...I celebrate you today
