ZULULAND LETTER: Listening to Jim Reeves at gran’s death bed

OUR entire family was recently summoned to gran’s bedside in Krugersdorp. She called for us to say our final goodbyes because she contracted some ailment, and at 93, death is in every cough.

So we went, some from as far away as England and Australia. Gran had given my aunt a list of which of her belongings goes to whom. My sister was given gran’s self- winding Seiko wristwatch and my cousin got the imbuia ball-and-claw dining room set.

I got stuck with a humongous three-piece wooden Phillips record player and two albums to play on

it; 20 Gospel Favourites and I Will Always Love You by Jim Reeves.

The rest of gran’s 27-strong Jim Reeves collection was distributed among the family. Saturday night we all sat up in vigil because gran said she can feel the presence of her own father in the room and that he must surely have been sent by God to fetch her.

However, come Sunday morning she was still with us and asked to listen to Where We’ll Never Grow

Old by Jim Reeves. My aunt found it on YouTube with her smartphone, but Gran said she would prefer hearing it crackling out of the Phillips.

That meant I had to go buy back the ancient record player from the pawnshop I sold it to the day before. I refused at first, but then I got a five-minute ‘grant her dying wish’ lecture from my sister and was told ‘you will burn in hell’ by an overly emotional cousin.

So I had to do it and will hopefully see the pawnshop owner also in hell one day because he gave me only R150 for the Phillips, but sold it back to me for R850.

What was ‘only good for fire wood’ the day before, miraculously transformed into an ‘exquisite

example of late 50s art deco’. Gran laid there the whole of Sunday, with Jim Reeves by her side, waiting for the light to appear.

My aunt checked on her every 30 minutes and would come out of the room saying, ‘She’s still with us

but…’, then after a brief pause will add softly, ‘I think she’s almost ready to go.’

But gran wasn’t ready because even though Jim Reeves started the night off with Distant Drums and followed that up with Adios Amigo, by Monday morning 5am gran had found the strength to get out of bed, walk to the Phillips, and cranked the volume up a bit on Jim’s Merry Christmas Polka.

She even made herself a cup of tea. As the birds started chirping outside, it dawned on us that gran

wasn’t going anywhere soon, so some of us drove home and some of us to the airport.

My aunt, whose house it was, was left with gran and her 27 Jim Reeves albums, because before we left gran collected all her belongings from the family, which were given to them

two days before.

My sister had to hand over the self-winding Seiko watch and my niece the Royal Albert tea set. Luckily I already, basically, gave the damn Phillips back the day before so I was spared having to slog the monstrosity around so early in the day. Dad told me that two weeks after almost dying, gran went to Sun City for a bit of a break and when I phoned her a few days ago – she turned 94 – gran sounded quite jovial.

She told me about Jim Reeves and how he would have probably still been around and on top of the charts if he didn’t die in a plane crash in 1964.

She said that that’s the way she wants to go, in a plane crash, and asked me how much a ticket to the Seychelles will cost, because she’s never been there and might as well give it a good look over on her way out.

She also said that I don’t have to wait for her to die to get the Phillips because she bought herself an Apple smartphone, and is now listening to Jim Reeves on YouTube, but added that I better look after the Phillips because, although it was bought in 1962, the salesman at Bradlows said it’s an exquisite example of the latest art deco and that Jim Reeves also owns one.