One of the joys of growing up with a younger brother — at least for me — was that whatever sporting spectacle we engaged in, I was invariably guaranteed victory.
Especially considering that Adam was born when I was 15 days away from turning eight. Of course I had to wait until I was about 15 before he was old enough to start playing sport and even then, I had to pull my punches, so to speak.
Cricket on the lawn, table tennis and, once I had a driver’s licence, tennis were our staple. Because our grass could turn the ball 90 degrees, or sometimes simply stop the ball outright, I tended to give him little leeway in cricket.
But in the other two I would give him an early lead and then challenge myself to try fight back. I always played my hardest because I hated to lose.
While Adam was never as smitten by sport as I was, he did win athletics and swimming certificates at junior school, which is more than either me or our older sister Karen achieved.
He was more of a gamer, battling away on our old ZX Spectrum “computer” that plugged into the TV with a memory completely reliant on cassette tapes.
The connection between the cassette player and the TV was temperamental, and any glitch would end one’s game, invariably as he was about to beat his best score.
Adam, who also enjoyed performing magic, had a far better grasp of mathematics than his two older siblings, leading him into a wonderful career as an electrical engineer.
He (my brother Adam) possessed what I believed at the time to be a psychic ability to predict things correctly. Most of it was about my rugby team, Villagers, and most of the time he would forecast the result correctly. He didn’t follow rugby and didn’t care, but he somehow called it right every time.
But he possessed what I believed at the time to be a psychic ability to predict things correctly. Most of it was about my rugby team, Villagers, and most of the time he would forecast the result correctly. He didn’t follow rugby and didn’t care, but he somehow called it right every time.
If there’d been a sports book in the early and mid-1980s we would have cleaned up.
I also sometimes ventured into non-sporting activities. Would I pass my matric finals? Would I pass my driving test?
There were a few times where he gave the wrong outcome, but probably because that was what I wanted to hear. On those occasions he always answered with much hesitation that I quickly learnt meant disaster for Villagers or whatever exam I was writing.
By the time Adam was in high school I had outgrown the urge to ask him about such trivial outcomes and for the past couple of decades at least I had almost forgotten about his ability to foretell the future.
In mid-2020 Adam was diagnosed with a rare, slow-growing cancer that had manifested with great discomfort in his sinuses. Chemo wasn’t an option, but he underwent radiation treatment that reduced the size of the tumour, but caused a heap of complications, including a major ear infection and not long afterwards a cocktail of meningitis and two other potentially fatal infections.
My brother fought like a true warrior, beating the doctor’s 50-50 prediction. From needing a walker to move around for a large chunk of 2021, he returned to living a normal life.
Last year the slow-growing tumour in his head had started reclaiming territory. He underwent a second bout of radiation and persevered once again with life.
But just after Christmas he deteriorated rapidly. I flew down to visit him in Cape Town early this month and he was in a bad way.
My sister and I visited his oncologist who told us Adam, father to a teen and a tween, had a year left, maybe less.
I received permission from work to temporarily relocate to Cape Town so I could spend time with Adam, and booked accommodation from early February to after his 49th birthday in mid-March.
His reaction on hearing this was that not only wasn’t he going to make it to his birthday, but he was unlikely to get to February. That was three days after we’d spoken to the doctor.
Three days later the best brother in the world, pretty much as he had predicted, died.
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