My father died suddenly in 1983, and my mother was a widow at the age of 58. He lived longer by far than Elsie's brother Hymie and her brother-in-law Alec, who both died in their 40s, and my cousin Stanley, who died in his early 30s. The family's anxiety about Elsie’s being a very young widow was therefore misplaced to an extent, but 58 is still young. My father lived to see both his grandsons, Jenny's children, but died before I had children.

The fact that my parents had such a happy marriage, despite many difficulties along the way, is something I treasure and am grateful for. Partly because I was so close to my mother, I was much further away from my father when he died, and this is something I still regret, but there is so much I have from him that is not to regret. Elsie was devastated by her loss, as was my grandmother – it is no easy task to bury your only son. Almost immediately, though, Elsie had a battle on her hands, as Granny and the Buchenwald Chicken decided that as my father was now dead, the best plan was that they move permanently into my mother’s flat with her. It was a large flat and they could each have their own room. Their plan was that they would all settle into a kind of toxic but comfortable intergenerational mourning, tended to by Anna Mothupi, Elsie's long-suffering domestic worker, and one of the few people who knew how to handle the vicious old women.

How did Elsie handle the demand for creating an intergenerational commune, akin to a Johannesburg suburban equivalent of a Lorca play? I worried that she might just succumb to the pressure, as she had done to varying degrees (to her cost and ours) throughout her long marriage. She proved herself made of sterner stuff, but went to some rather extreme lengths to get done what needed to be done. She was absolutely clear that she would not have Granny and the Chicken come and live with her. She would visit them, take them out on weekends, and tend to their needs, but she was not going to have them live with her.