In her last moments with Pierre Korkie, said his widow, Yolande, he hugged her and told her how much he loved her and his two children. Yesterday she was due to see her husband again - to identify his body.
In the hours before Pierre was killed during a failed US special forces rescue in Yemen on Saturday, Korkie had been told that his release was im minent.
She said: "I visualised something different - him holding me in his arms, hearing his soft voice.
"This morning, there were intense emotions of longing; we will never have him to the end."
Pierre's body arrived at Waterkloof air force base yesterday morning.
Yolande spoke to the media, with her son, Pieter-Ben, 17, and daughter Lize-Marie, 14, by her side.
She spoke of the "tremendous amount of support" she had received from South Africans and her sorrow that her children had not been able to say goodbye to their father.
Referring to the time she spent with him in captivity, she said: "I had the opportunity of spending eight months with Pierre."
The couple were kidnapped in May last year. Yolande was released in January.
Gift of the Givers, the humanitarian group that organised the press conference, had negotiated Pierre's release with his al-Qaeda captors.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman said yesterday that the plan had been to fly Yolande out of the country to be reunited with her husband.
Yolande said she had forgiven his killers, saying: "What will it help to find out what happened? Will it bring Pierre back? We have chosen to let it go ."
She said she and Pierre went to Yemen to teach and combat poverty.
"We have lost, but one can never regret life with people who have nothing."
The memorial service will be on Friday in Bloemfontein.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
