Halycon

The death of an old friend, Out of the blue the news that he had lain down for a nap and never got up. Can't believe it. Memories are still of a vibrant young man playing tennis, with a powerful serve. We used to gather every Wednesday evening at our tennis court, a crowd of us. We would play until after midnight, winter and summer - winter in the Highveld is freezing at night. We used to wear warm tracksuits and a glove on our free hand. Game after game with laughter and good exercise.

F was a prodigous builder and he had built a tennis house, a thatched, round area with a comfy chairs and a small kitchen, sliding glass doors looking on to our tennis court. Such parties we had there - not only Wednesday evenings but champagne breakfasts, or Sunday afternoons, with children running round like kittens underfoot. What I remember most is our laughter. We were a group of comfortable friends; we played tennis, went out for dinner, took boats onto Hartebeespoort Dam, had braais.

On the shores of the dam, at a place called Cosmos, F had renovated a small thatched cottage and there we were most weekends, with friends dropping in for lunch. We had a small motor boat and used to take it upriver, between tree-lined banks from which legowaans (alligator-shaped reptiles) would slide into the water and once, I swear, we saw a python swimming in the water. Our children would swing from a tree on the bank below our house; the ground fell steeply away into the water and there were large trees everywhere. It was only a small place but we loved it. Again, my main memory is of laughter and fun. The friends were lovely - and now one has died.

Not only that, but another member of this group has cancer, and his death is imminent. He is younger, the son of dear friends - F and I were somewhere in the middle of these generations. His father died some years ago in America and not long before F died, we visited his mother in Rhode Island.

Life and death is catching up. My memories of those Cosmos and Muldersdrift days are of us in our thirties, with small children and an endless capacity for fun. We had no thought of death, we played and laughed and worked hard. Husbands went to work morning to evening, wives took small children to school, and cooked things; we - I - questioned little.

I was busy with three children born within three years and a husband whose energy was boundless. We were happy, but just how carefree we were, we ignored. Only nostalgia reveals the invisible boundaries of our fun. We gave no thought to its ever ending, to people dying, to moving on. We had no knowledge of grief, we were innocent as puppies.