Tabisa Nkomo, one of the women from our group, pulls me out of the room into the dining area and starts reciting The Lord’s Prayer. In a panicked daze, I pray with her. As she says “Amen”, I try to run back in, but she grabs me and pleads with me to stay out. I wrestle myself from her grip, bulldozing my way back into the room. I don’t know when the doctor came in, but when I get to Gugs, she’s resuscitating him. I hear a loud gasp from him and his eyes pop wide open. The doctor instructs somebody to get a stretcher.
“Take this man down the mountain now!” I hear her shout.
I immediately kick off my shoes to slip on my summit pants and jacket. Thankfully, I put on the other layers of clothing earlier. As I tug on the rest of my gear, I hear the doctor ask who will be taking Gugs down because she needs to show them how to change the drip.
“I am. Show me!” She proceeds to demonstrate the procedure, but my mind is in such a frenzy that I have no idea what I am supposed to do. It looks so complicated. She then decides to change the drip herself instead. A Tanzanian man runs in holding a small oxygen tank, and hands it to the doctor. She turns to him and tells him that “we don’t need that”. Her words will play over and over in my head for years to come.
Moments later, a group of men dash in and carry Gugs out to the crude metal bicycle stretcher now stationed outside the door. I slip on a beanie and gloves, throw my backpack on my back, then head out the door. By this time, judging by the number of people who are hovering around outside, it looks like the entire camp has woken up. Richard appears next to me, fully dressed with his backpack on his back. I am awash with relief – he is joining me on the trek down. By now the doctor has inserted an endotracheal tube down Gugs’s throat to open his airway. She then demonstrates how we should pump the tube and watch for Gugs’s chest to rise. A team of six guides, Richard and I gather around Gugs and when the doctor gives us the thumbs up, we start running. I am unprepared for what lies ahead. It is dark, it’s freezing cold and we are roughly 28 kilometres – eight hours – away from medical assistance.
CHAPTER 5
What they don’t tell you
Nobody prepares you for the day your soulmate dies. People tell you what to expect when you get married, or have a baby, but no one talks to you about death. They don’t tell you what you are going to have to do when you lose your husband, especially not when you’re in a foreign country.
Making my way out of the hospital in shock, seeing the love of my life’s cold body, devoid of life, of energy, of his radiant smile, I am completely numb. I can’t connect with my mind, my breath, my legs as I slowly walk away. My mind seems to have stopped processing anything other than the minutiae of the present moment. Left, right, left, right. I place one foot in front of the next. Time stands still. My throat has constricted. I cannot speak. No words will come out. I’m struggling to breathe. I don’t know how I manage to make my way back to the car; I know Richard must have walked beside me, but I am unaware of anyone and anything. I find myself in the seat of the car and dissolve into an aching weep, surrounded by onlookers hovering in stunned silence.
I’m taken to the police station to report Gugs’s death. Everything is surreal – an out-of-body experience – and yet I’m also acutely aware of the present. Like I have zoomed into a terrible nightmare. I walk into the station and, noticing my grief, a Tanzanian woman walks up to me, taps me sharply on my forehead a few times and says, “Pole sana” (“I’m so sorry”). I am startled by her gesture. I feel like a robot, as though automatons have taken over my body. I find myself handing over Gugs’s possessions, the stuff in his backpack, to the police: his head torch, wallet, running gloves, an extra beanie, a water bottle, his GoPro camera and a power bank. One by one, objects are placed on the desk. Is this all that remains of my husband?
I proceed to fill in forms. While busy with all the admin, my phone rings. I see the name of the caller light up my screen. It’s Gugs’s dad again. Oh no! I haven’t broken the news to the family yet! I can’t face it. I would rather fill out forms, see handwritten letters of the alphabet make marks on the pile of pages. I can’t speak, let alone to Gugs’s dad. I turn to Honest and hand him the phone. “I can’t tell Gugu’s dad, please tell him,” I plead. He takes the phone and walks down the passage, still within earshot.
I hear him say, “You are speaking to Honest Minja, the owner of the tour company that Trek4Mandela is using for the climb up Kilimanjaro.” There is a long pause. “I’m sorry to report that your son Gugu Zulu has passed away.” I hear him repeat this a few times in different ways to the person on the other end, confirming that it really is Gugu Zulu, the professional racing driver from South Africa who has passed away. I can’t bear to think of his dad on the other side. The call ends and Honest walks back to hand the phone to me. As I take it from him, it rings again. It’s the same number. Somehow, I gather up the courage to answer.
It’s Gugs’s mom. “Letshego, is it true?”
“Yes, it is,” is all I can manage. The line goes dead.
My heart plummets. I feel like I’ve failed both her and her husband. I have failed Gugu. In fact, right now, standing so bereft in the police station, I feel like I failed the entire world.
After the documents are completed, Honest informs me it’s time to leave. An unidentified man joins us in the car. We head back to the hospital, this time not to the emergency room, but to the morgue to officially identify Gugs for the police photographer, the man who’s been travelling with us. I’ve never been inside a morgue before, let alone ever had to identify a dead person. It’s a cold, sterile room lined with metal fridges. It’s freezing inside. The morgue assistant opens a fridge door, pulls out the tray with my husband’s lifeless, naked body on it. I feel like I’ve seen this in some movie before. It’s unbelievable that here I am living it. The sheet barely covers his body, the one I have known and loved for so long. It feels wrong to see him so exposed, so vulnerable. I bite my lip … I want to ask the assistant to “please cover him properly”, but I numbly remember it won’t make any difference anyway. Gugs is gone. Gugs is gone. I hear the words in my head but I can’t quite grasp their meaning.
Slowly I walk up to his body. Despite being naked, he looks so peaceful. But his mouth is still wide open, his head turned. I ask the assistant if they will close his mouth. He says, “Yes.” Then I ask if they can please turn his head as well – somehow, it feels right that Gugs should have his head straightened. The man walks up to Gugs, holds his head and cranks it really hard to the side to straighten it. I literally jump back in a fright. I didn’t expect him to do it at that very moment. I walk back up to Gugs and, almost apologetically, I touch his shoulder. Almost immediately I regret it. My hand recoils as it lands on his cold, frozen body. Just a little while ago the skin on his hand had felt soft and supple. I know now without a doubt that he is really dead. He is nowhere to be seen, just this cold and frozen form. He is dead.
The drive back to the hotel is a blur. On arrival, the staff is there to welcome me back, all of us in tears. I manage to take a shower and eat. The blur of the day extends. I go through the motions of being alive.
The one thing I have always prided myself on is my communication skills. In the midst of this terrible trauma and grief, I somehow find the ability to draft a message to some of our closest friends to inform them of Gugs’s passing. His parents, sister and my mom know, but many of the friends we regard as family still need to hear before media reports go viral. So I carefully draft the message. “Dear family and friends, I’m sad to announce that early this morning I lost my Gugs on Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania …” And then I start to send it out. It gives me something to do.
It’s Monday, 18 July. Later I will remember that it’s Madiba’s birthday. Right now it’s just Monday and my husband is dead – Gugu is dead. The words bounce around in my head. None of this seems real. The rest of the day passes in a daze. Just before midnight Liyanda, Gugs’s sister, and my close friend and business partner Khethiwe Mlangeni arrive from South Africa to be by my side.