Alice de Leeuw died on the day of her husband of 52 years, Joseph de Leeuw’s burial. A day after her husband’s passing, she told relatives: “Pa is coming to fetch me”.
Joseph’s funeral was on Saturday at the Reconcile Anglican Church in Tafelsig. His wife, Alice, gave him a final kiss on the forehead as his coffin was wheeled into the church. Within in minutes she breathed her last breath.
“As we pushed our father into the church in his coffin, she gave him a big kiss on his forehead,” said her daughter, Geraldine Idas.
Idas said her mother deteriorated after her father’s death.
“(She) didn’t want to eat and she started talking very slowly,” said Idas. “It was like she was heartbroken.
“A day after he died she said to my sister Mandy, ‘Pa kom my haal’. (Daddy is coming to fetch me) We said she must hang on.”
Desmond Idas, her husband and Alice’s son-in-law said their son, Desral, was preparing to wheel her out of the church when they noticed something was wrong.
“My son wanted to push her wheelchair but she wasn’t responding,” he told The Daily Voice.
“Then Alice’s son Eon touched her and said, ‘Mammie is weg.(Mommy is gone).’”
“As we placed my father into the hearse everyone rushed into the church and forgot about my father in the hearse,” Alice’s other daughter, Mandy Williams, said.
“We left then to Belhar Cemetery to bury him.”
“We don’t know the cause of death as yet but it’s like dying of a broken heart,” said Idas.
“All we can say is thank you to God because look where my mother died – inside the church, and they both passed on peacefully.”
“Their anniversary is August 29. They would have been married 53 years,” she said.
“They were inseparable… there was never another woman or man who came between them.
“They would sit peacefully together under the tree at our home and they were indeed as they say, till death do us part,” she added.
