38 years later: A father’s anguish

Every day for the past 38 years the sun has risen and set on a specific patch of earth in Hardwick Street Cemetery.

Days came and went. Rain fell, winds kicked up the red dirt dust and discarded chips packets. The grass grew, was cut and grew again. For 38 years, one particular grave went unnoticed.

Week after week, workers went about their task of maintaining the burial grounds, not knowing the significance of grave number V64, second to last in the sixth row from the left.

Two broken pieces of red brick are all that mark the final resting-place of three-day-old Kathleen Hughes. The mound of earth that once covered the little coffin has sunken away over the years, leaving a small square of flattened and parched grass in its place.

Robin Hughes, his pregnant wife and his young son came to Newcastle in 1976 from Wales in the United Kingdom. Mr Hughes came with hope and a purpose, to be able to provide for his family as a crane rigger at Iscor, now ArcelorMittal.

Soon after taking up residence in town, Mr and Mrs Hughes were elated with the birth of their second child; a daughter named Kathleen.

Kathleen was born under difficult circumstances and after three days in an incubator, tragically passed away.

“It was like a big black cloud over the family. My wife was in hospital. I was at home with our little boy, and I don’t drive, so the only way to get to the hospital to see my wife and our new baby was to carry my son up to two miles [three kilometers],” Mr Hughes told the BBC. “And then Kathleen died.”

“All I can remember was the funeral day. A hearse. A funeral car behind it,” he reminisced. “Me getting out of the car and carrying my daughter’s coffin to the grave. It was the only time I carried her. It just hurts so much. I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through it.”

At the time, the Hughes family could not afford a tombstone for baby Kathleen and she was buried in an unmarked grave.

Gone but not forgotten

The family eventually returned to the United Kingdom, but Mr Hughes never forgot his wish to be able to give his daughter a proper memorial. He carried on with his life, plagued by his anguish for almost four decades.

“They say time heals, but I could just be sitting there and I’d just find myself thinking about it, about not being able to afford a stone for her grave,” he said. “In my mind, the headstone was the key to putting everything behind me, like a chapter closing.”

He never thought he would ever be able to return to South Africa to fulfil his wish.

Then one day, Mr Hughes told friend and wine shop owner, Julie Mills, the story of his daughter and how he would return to South Africa to put a headstone on her grave if he won the lottery.

“I was so moved to hear what had happened that I had to find a way to send him out there,” said Ms Mills to the BBC. “He told me that story right out the blue. He’d been carrying this round for years, bless him, and hardly told anyone.”

Ms Mills and other friends of Mr Hughes raised approximately R40 000 in eight months by holding jumble sales, collections, hotpot suppers and raffles and surprised him at a presentation.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d go out there.”

Mr Hughes told the BBC he planned to come to South Africa later this month to erect a headstone to be inscribed in English, Welsh and Zulu as a tribute to the different cultures of Kathleen’s brief life.