My toes curled and uncurled in my light blue takkies as I began rocking back and forth; heel, toe, heel, toe; a bored 7-year-old. The vaulted ceilings and huge columns of this giant building didn’t interest me, all I wanted was to go home and play TV games. I was ordered into the car by my parents 5 minutes after starting a game of Contra, so I was a little distracted. But we were here for something important, what was it. Oh yes! Granny Saritta is coming to visit. My realisation is accompanied by the loud vwoosh of a colossal Boeing 747 coming into land at Johannesburg International Airport.

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My mother, father, 3-year-old sister and I were some of the first people to begin populating the waiting area. More people began to surround us as the anticipation mounted, everyone practising their smiles and glancing eagerly at the doors at the slightest sign of movement.

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Then the passengers began flowing through the doors, slowly at first but then it picked up to a steady stream. Newly united friends and families came and went, each with their own set of smiles, hugs and tears while my family stood staring at the ever-opening sliding doors, which never seemed to produce the right person.

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A lady’s voice kept blaring out over the intercom and it took me a while to decipher what she was saying. “Medical staff urgently report to the domestic arrival gate; medical staff urgently report to the domestic arrival gate.” Almost all those words made no sense but they seemed to be worrying my parents as I looked up at them after my 100th zig-zag between the divider poles. My mom’s face was starting to look panicked as she whispered to my dad, he shook his head and put his arm around her shoulder.

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We were the only ones left when the sliding doors opened and an unknown figure, dressed in a blue suit with a high-visibility jacket draped over it, stepped over the threshold. Looking at my parents she said, “Are you waiting for Saritta de Nobrego?” My father nodded. “Please, come with me”, she responded solemnly. My father reached down to grab my hand as we followed the neon jacket through the sliding doors into the baggage collection area. I could not understand the grown up conversation, so I began looking for something of interest in my new surroundings. And as we turned the corner and began walking towards the escalators I found it. It was Granny Saritta. Stretched out on her back on the snow-white tile floor, as if she were making snow angels, she lay next to her luggage cart, completely still. People scurried in and around the scene, I didn’t notice for what, or where they went, all I could see was my Granny.

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We were quickly ushered up to a lounge with cream-coloured walls and too many potted plants. My parents were seated, with my sister, on a light-brown patterned couch and I sat, alone, on its twin behind them. Everything felt muffled and outside of time. The world went blurry as I struggled to come to terms with what I had just seen. Words intermittently pierced the blanket of silence that surrounded me; “heart attack”, “coma”.  I couldn’t understand them so I put all my effort into the one thing I could understand; I could not cry. I needed to be like the brave soldiers from Contra. I needed to be strong; for my sister, for my parents, for granny. So I just sat there, in silence, stone-faced in the storm of emotion that crashed against me, but could not break me, I wouldn’t let it.

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Suddenly my dad was kneeling in front of me, his hand on my leg he said, “Come my boy, we need to go.” I nodded, stood up and followed my family out the cream-coloured lounge with too many potted plants, down the escalator, across the snow-white tiles, through the sliding doors and into a car that took us to a hospital. The whole way I never shed a tear for my ganny and I wouldn’t for the next 12 years.