Unfailing love evident for over sixty years

MBOMBELA – After 60 years of marriage, the unconditional love between Graeme and Helen Maddison is evident from the moment you meet them. The Maddisons celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on April 11. Their secret? Never go to bed angry.

“Fight it out until you agree, make love and then go to sleep,” the couple said.

Graeme and Helen first started dating in July 1958 and by September, they were engaged.

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“I was on the top of a double-deck bus with my friend Colleen when I saw two girls at the front. I pointed to one of them and told my friend ‘I am going to marry that girl’,” Graeme said.

After his car was repaired, he followed the bus he had usually taken with Helen. When she got off, he followed her to the street she lived in.

“I stopped next to her and said the stupidest thing that I have said in my life: ‘Why have you been staring at me?’”

Helen interrupts. “Well you can just imagine that there is really no way to respond to that.” He asked her if he could give her a lift home. The pair was married in 1959 in Johannesburg when Helen was 18 and Graeme was 21.

“My mother said if I wanted to get married that young, I should make it work and not come crawling home. She asked us so nicely to wait two years before we had children and then we had a honeymoon baby,” Helen laughs.

They held their honeymoon at St Michael’s in Durban. “The first year I went there I was a bachelor, the second year I had a wife and by year three I also had a baby,” Graeme said, laughing.

By 1967, the Maddisons had two daughters and one son. In 1974 the pair bought a farm in Waterval Onder. “I loved honey in the comb and started farming with bees. I had about two hives when I told Graeme I wanted more.

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He bought me 100, Arisa Janse van Rensburg Graeme and Helen Maddison. Unfailing love evident for over sixty years so we ended up basically buying the farm for the bees.”

They moved to the farm permanently in 1988 where they lived without any electricity. Their son, Andrew, started farming with them and they developed a hydroponic farming system.

“He passed away in 1996 and we wanted to sell the farm then as we were getting too old to live there alone,” Helen explained.

It took them 13 years to sell the farm as the fear of farm attacks in Africa worsened. Currently they live near Kaapsehoop where they farm with raspberries and figs. Their products, under the Old Cape label, are sold at Crossing, The Grove and Steiltes SPARs.

Even in their old age, one of Helen’s favourite memories is of when she returned from Japan where she travelled for work.

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“When Graeme picked me up he gave me a big bunch of flowers. When I got home, I wanted to put them in a vase but the whole house was already filled with flowers and there was not an empty vase in sight,” Helen said while a tear ran down her check.

Graeme looked at her and smiled. “Every night when we go to bed I still say ‘goodnight, sleep tight, God bless and I love you.’”