The highest compliment

It was speaker no 4 at my cousin's funeral that did it.
She painted a picture of this sainted person whom I barely recognised but it was the mention that Thelma Josephine, (what a name I thought! She had been T J to me and most people except her sadly awful mother, long gone) had been a dedicated nursing sister that struck a chord. Now THAT's something that really is true I thought in a flood of relief.

So when speaker 4 sat down and I, speaker no 5 was called to the podium I looked over the crowd of people who had gathered to pay 'their respects'. They looked stunned with sadness yes, but it was mostly boredom and wonder at this mostly unrecognisable person being held up as an example of perfection that dulled their eyes.

"I am so glad that sister Sarie reminded us that T J had been a wonderful nurse.
We grew up together and when we played dolls, I taught them sums and reading and she bandaged wounds painted on their celluloid arms with red nail polish. The big doll had a drawn on black patch over one eye and stitches across its skull. Indelible pencil did that damage. It was permanent.

She phoned me in that first week of her being a probationer. She described her neat white uniform and stiff beginner nurse's cap that trapped her unruly red curls. 'I had to use a million clips to keep it on,' she crowed.
I was settling into training college. We were both trying desperately to adapt to very different lifestyles compared to our relatively carefree high school years.
She phoned me daily from a 'tickey box' in the nurse's home once in tears. 'I killed him,' she said through a thick veil of tears and a running nose......'yes, murder.' The phone went dead and in a panic I phoned her mother who for once was in a good mood.
'Oh you know our Thelma Josephine, drama queen par excellence..........yes, she was spooning soup into this old gentlemen's mouth, first day on the ward you know, and the old chap draws in a last breath and dies..... it turns out he had a major stroke! Died, just like that!' and I could hear a faint snap of her fingers, 'with a spoonful of chicken noodle soup in his mouth!'

The eyes of the people who had loved THIS TJ began to twinkle and made bold I told them of her very first day nursing experience. She had phoned me and for once I got the whole story before it cut us off.

She was being given a tour of the ward by the Sister in charge and she was suddenly handed a bedpan that a patient had just used. She took it as the nurse attending to the patient needed an extra pair of hands. She stood there helplessly until the matron barked 'deal with it' and pointed vigorously to the door.

TJ made off with it, covered with a demure little cloth, wanting desperately to hold her nose. Bewildered she saw a room labelled 'sluice room' and headed in there. She saw a suitable toilet sort of contraption and emptied it with relief. Then she wondered how to flush it and saw a raised bump on the tiled floor and guessed that it was a snazzy foot pedal. She peered forward and put her size 4, brand new nursing show firmly on it.
A powerful jet of water spurted at her taking her nurse's cap cleanly off her head in a swift movement so it hit the tiled wall behind her. Her red curls and uniform dripping she was sent brusquely back to the nurse's home to change. She described how her shoes squeaked with trailing streams of water.
'How was I supposed to know that I had to put the pan over the toilet so it could be washed out!'

By this time the congregation was laughing out loud and someone smacked the palms of his hands together.
On a roll I described the antics of our growing up years in a long gone era when she was often naughty with ridiculous results.
We remembered how fleet of foot she was escaping from dire consequences of her actions.

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We remembered how beautiful she was before disease halted her in her tracks and whittled her to the near skeleton she was in the last months of her life.

I told them about her vivid life that we had shared. Aspects of her life well lived, with which we all could identify.

The COMPLIMENT came over cups of tea at the 'wake' her mother, my Aunt Dora would have called it.
With speckles of grated cheese in his moustache, TJ's brother, Reginald Archibald Barnabus (known only as RAB, except by you probably know who by now) said to me,

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'oh my goodness I laughed so hard while you were speaking, that I forgot for a few minutes that I was at her funeral!'

The ice was broken and as chatted, we celebrated the life of a truly exuberant, extraordinary, exemplary person who will live forever in our memories as a young woman with flying red curls, laughing as she always ran to embrace whatever life had in store for her.

Rest in Peace TJ............perhaps at last you have at last grown into your noble name................Thelma Josephine van Jaaarsveld.