Mum and Dad were never grandly demonstrative or effusive with their affection.
Dad was naturally introverted and emotionally reserved—though nowhere near as withheld as his own father, who took emotional distance to stoic extremes. Even so, I think Mum often wished Dad had been a little more openly romantic. She was usually the one to initiate a warm embrace. Dad would return the hug, but always with a faint undercurrent of discomfort around public displays of affection. Almost as an instinctive, conditioned defense mechanism to diffuse the intimacy, he would give her bottom an affectionate little pat, look down, and call her "Diddums"—his pet name for her.
Yet beneath that quiet, self-conscious exterior, the love between them ran deep. You just had to watch closely for the moments when the guard came down.
Two distinct memories made that crystal clear to me.
The first was during a family holiday to Mauritius. We had spent an idyllic week soaking up the island sun, completely unwinding by the Indian Ocean. Free from the routines of the dental practice and the workshop, Dad was more relaxed than I had ever seen him.
On the transfer bus heading back to the airport, Mum and Dad sat together just ahead of us. As the lush landscape drifted past the windows, I glanced over and noticed they were holding hands—fingers laced together, quiet and still. It was something I had literally never seen them do before. There was such an unforced, luminous tenderness between the two of them in that moment that it moved me to tears right there on the bus. It etched itself into my mind as an enduring portrait of what they really shared.
The second moment emerged from a completely different, far more frightening setting.
Dad and I had embarked on a four-day canoe expedition down the Orange River. It was a magnificent adventure, navigating the wide desert gorges under the sun, and Dad was having the time of his life—until we hit the biggest rapid on the route.
Our canoe took on water, lost its line, and capsized violently into the boiling white water.
We both managed to swim through the currents and scramble ashore to safety, but the shock of the submersion completely shattered Dad’s nervous system. It psyched him out in a way I had never witnessed before. The trauma triggered an intense, lingering panic attack that hung over him for days like a dark cloud, so severe that he became convinced the shock had brought on a mild stroke.
Over the days that followed, as we paddled through the calmer waters, he kept turning to me with genuine distress in his eyes, repeating the same haunting thought:
"Graeme, I really think I've had a stroke... I can't picture your mum's face. I can't picture her beautiful face."
Eventually, as the days wore on and his nervous system slowly recalibrated, the panic receded and his mind cleared. But the phrase stayed with me.
In the midst of the most terrifying physical and psychological crisis of his life, when his brain felt hijacked by shock, his immediate, instinctive terror wasn't about his health, his safety, or his survival. His world narrowed entirely to the fear of losing the memory of the woman he loved.
Dad may not have been a man for flowery poetry or grand public romance, but when the waters ran rough, she was the anchor his soul reached for first.
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