O2B1F3E.3 WHEN TWO ARE AS ONE 2006

MOMENTS IN OUR LIVES-2  2026-07-27

O2B1F3E.3 WHEN TWO ARE AS ONE 2006

(Gemini) This chapter is a unique, honest and deeply moving testimony of your life's journey. It touches on the core of what it means to be human: the search for someone who truly understands your essence, the pain of "what could have been", and ultimately the deep, maturing love that is anchored in loyalty and care.

The theme - "When Two are as One" - takes on beautiful meaning through your story. It shows how different people at different times in our lives shape our understanding of connectedness, and how one ultimately finds an anchor through the storms of life.

1. The Theme and Philosophical Introduction

· A Soulmate and Commitment: Your introduction about the search for a soulmate sets the right tone. The idea that many people are content with the "comfort of being together", but that few experience the deep honesty of a true soulmate, gives this chapter a very strong intellectual and emotional foundation.

2. Strong Visualization and Emotional Images

There are a few scenes in this chapter that are incredibly vividly and eloquently written. They will make readers (and your descendants) think deeply:

· The Karoo plant container with Sorrels: The gesture of planting Karoo sorrels for Madelein in the flaked rocks and loamy soil and sprinkling them with water from your fingers is poetic and symbolic of your caring nature.

· The Sunrise on the Hillock: The silence between you on the rocks as the sun rises at Philippolis captures that "unity in spirit", without any words being needed.

· The First Meeting with Rinka: The contrast between you and Heinrich in your shorts and bare feet, and Rinka and Tiana with the "beehive" hairstyle - and the discovery that all four of you have red hair! It brings a wonderful lightness and impact.

3. The Story of Marriage and Love

The transition from the search for a soulmate to the practical, daily reality of caring is beautifully rounded:

"Rinka took care of us every day for 48 years... Now it's my turn to take care of her, and I do it with love."

This closing phrase provides the ultimate answer to your initial question about unity. It shows that true unity does not lie only in the romantic "spark" or the search for a soulmate, but in the long-term act of marriage, sharing moments, and the willingness to take care of each other when life changes.

This is a beautiful, valuable and honest piece of life history. It depicts a life path of emotional growth, painful choices, which ultimately leads to a deeply fulfilling and gracious life.

(Jurgens) WHEN TWO ARE AS ONE 2006

What would my thought be with this subject? Could it be that unity among people consists of a majority of which it consists? It could be, as the old South African motto was “Unity Is Strength”.

The joy of being one is something that everyone seeks, to feel, to know there is someone who feels with you about a matter, however small or however large. As I write, there is a desire that people will read this, and hopefully understand what I mean. Isn’t this just a general longing among most, or all people, that there is a soul somewhere who feels with you? A Soulmate. I think this is something that is only destined for a few people.

This is a fictional story of people for whom this was true. If this also moves you, you yourself may have been in such a situation.

When a man meets a girl, many feel that spark that they are destined for each other - this is the infatuation stage, which sees the future very rosy, and certainly most people believe that it will remain that way. Unfortunately, it happens all too often that when the ordinary pressures of daily life take their attention away from each other, then this infatuation fades. What often remains is mostly the comfort of being with people who take care of each other's daily needs. They care for each other, even love each other, and if they are lucky enough to have children, then they both have something that they share and have to take care of. But rarely does there remain the feeling that they are soulmates, that deep longing for each other, where you reveal your deepest being to each other, because in the other you have found someone with whom you want to be completely open and honest.

I was blessed to have known two such women.

My first marriage was not happy. Haylé often sought her happiness elsewhere in other relationships. She was very honest with me, and often told me things that hurt deeply. The result was that over time I became numb to her. A family member once said that if anyone paid attention to me “Jurgens would fall like a tree.”

Which is exactly what happened. Neighbours moved in next door to us in the Cape, and like good neighbours we got to know each other. From the start, Mila and I were soulmates. I am someone who rarely talks, but I talked to her until my voice became hoarse. It was like a clogged fountain suddenly bursting open - all the accumulated longings of years found an outlet.

I didn't know what was happening to me, and one evening I walked over to her. I remember like today how she stood there with her two-year-old son on her arm. I said to her “I don't know what it is, but mentally you upset me terribly - not physically.” She replied “You shouldn't have come. You upset me not only mentally, but also sexually.” It was like a thunderbolt in my ears.

Understandably, the fact that we lived next to each other and that we were soulmates caused us to grow closer to each other over time. One day she said to me something that was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard: “Now my longing has taken form.” Although we tried several times from both sides to break the bond between us, the attraction was simply too strong. After we decided to end our relationship and had no contact for a week, she pleaded with her husband: “I can’t live without him.” The four of us then talked about our future together, decided that we would get married and that her son and mine would stay with us.

Both of us later divorced, and we were looking forward to getting married. But as is true in many such relationships, things don’t always go well, and Haylé threatened to take her own life if we continued with our marriage plans. We didn’t want to take this new risk, and so our relationship foundered. Haylé moved to an apartment with our son, and Mila and her family moved away. I was left alone, and for a few years I was very lonely, with the thought constantly running through my mind “What might have been”.

A few years later, Mila gave me the phone number of Madelein, who was separated from her husband because he was a complete alcoholic, who had drunk himself into hospital several times. Madelein had a three-year-old daughter and worked at the Hendrik Verwoerd dam, to be near her parents in Philippolis. I called her, and from the start we clicked and had a great time chatting. We could both sense that we were similar people, and I started calling her regularly, and also writing her long letters - I could express my thoughts well since my school days.

I wanted to meet Madelein and we made plans to visit her at Hendrik Verwoerd dam. At the time, my parents lived in Colesberg, their house adjacent to the Dutch Reformed Church's commonage. I walked around there a lot, and made a bakkie out of the slivers peeled from rocks by the extreme temperatures in the Karoo. I put a few handfuls of soft loamy soil from under the rocks in it and planted small plants, including sorrels, that grew in the shade under the rocks - it is protected there from the weather. It was a mini garden that I made for her. The daily sprinkling of a few drops of water from your fingers is enough to keep the sorrels' heads high.

I took my music system and a variety of light classical LPs from my collection, which we both liked. The workers at the dam stayed in Oranjekrag, where she rented a house. For the few days I was there, I rented another house within walking distance from her. In the evenings we would visit each other, and after dinner we would lie on the carpet and listen quietly to the music, our hands clasped together, silent in each other's presence.

We wanted to visit her parents. They had a shop in Philippolis, not far from the dam. Very nice people, still some of the old Afrikaner farmer descendants. I wanted to take her to the veld early one morning, so that we could see the dawn in the pitch black night. I got up about four o’clock and walked quietly to her room, lightly touching her cheek with my fingertips. In the darkness we left town and drove a few kilometres to where there was a hillock. I held the boundary fence open for her so that she could climb through, and we carefully climbed a short distance up the ridge and sat down on two rocks there. To the east there was only a narrow strip of red light. As the earth turned, the red strip grew more and more intense and later lighter, until the sun finally rose. The whole time we said nothing, just drank in the silence. We were one in spirit.

Aunt Salomé and Uncle Piet’s farm, Twyfelpoort, is about 48 km northwest of Colesberg. I wanted to introduce her to them, because I’ve known them since I was a baby, and I was planning to ask her to marry me after she divorced her husband. We sat at an outside table, drank tea, and chatted. Aunt Salomé told her before we drove away, “It’s rare that one gets a second chance.”

When my few days of vacation were over, I went to her house in the morning before the bus came to pick her up. She was a poet and wrote me a beautiful poem, of which I only remember this stanza: “That we run naked through the long grass”, which so beautifully expresses how two spirits go through life completely honestly with each other, with nothing separating them. When I kissed her, it was the first time, I held her face between my palms. She raised her hands and almost convulsively clasped my wrists. After a few long seconds, she and her daughter went to the bus, and I set off for the Cape.

I continued to correspond with her, hoping that she would find the courage to take the step of divorcing her alcoholic husband. I warned her that the chances were slim that he would rehabilitate himself, because he had relapsed several times. But she continued to believe that this time he would make a full recovery. A year or two later, I heard from Mila that Madelein had finally divorced her husband.

I often wondered what had become of her. The last time I saw her was when we were on our way to Rinka’s parents in the Western Transvaal on holiday. We drove through Philippolis so that I could ask Madelein’s parents how she was doing. Our firstborn Christo was not yet a year old at the time and was lying in his blanket at Rinka’s feet. When I entered their shop, Madelein was standing behind one of the counters. She seemed calm and I could see that she was happy with her parents. I introduced her to Rinka, and as we drove I felt satisfied that she was doing well. I hope she later met a farmer in the district who would value her for her qualities, because she is a very special person for whom I will always have the highest appreciation. She was my soulmate at a time when I was very lonely.

After Madelein, loneliness became more and more depressing for me. My younger sister Johanna took great pity on her older brother. They had been married for a short time and lived in Klerksdorp. Across from their flat lived a recently divorced young woman and her four-year-old daughter. Johanna told Rinka about her divorced brother and asked if she would like to correspond with me. But Rinka was not at all willing - she was too hurt when her husband Wilhelm ran away with another man. After a few weeks Johanna decided to tell me about Rinka and asked if I would like to write to her.

So I found an outlet to express my feelings. I often wrote her long letters, but she didn’t reply back - she was afraid of being hurt again, because she has a soft heart. Until one afternoon, when she had those “Sunday afternoon blues” again. She took a pen and wrote to me. But she didn’t know my surname at the time, because I always just ended my letters as “Jurgens”. And she was too shy to ask Johanna, so she just addressed her letter to “Jurgens”! I got it and was overjoyed to have someone to share my feelings with again.

We wrote to each other regularly, and because I am an emotional person, we soon became serious about each other. Six months later, during my December vacation, Heinrich, my seven-year-old son, and I drove to Klerksdorp to meet Rinka and her four-year-old daughter, Tiana, for the first time. We didn't know what the other looked like, because it wasn't important to me - I got to know her heart from her letters.

Rinka's first husband Wilhelm was apparently very particular about his appearance, and I wanted to make it clear from the start what kind of person I was. When we knocked on her front door, Heinrich and I were both dressed only in shorts, with T-shirts hanging down and bare feet. When she opened the door, we were all surprised: Rinka could be pulled through a ring, with her hair done up high, beehive style, as was the custom at the time. Tiana was also beautiful with a dress that stood out wide. And most special of all: all four of us had red hair!

Her parents farmed in the Wolmaransstad district, and we all went there together so that we could meet each other. Again, Heinrich and I were dressed informally. I wanted to make it clear that I was not like Wilhelm or tried to be - I was my own person.

We were quietly married on the farm on April 8 the following year, on my father’s birthday, with only our parents, brothers and sisters present, because we wanted to keep it simple, with only the people we cared about there. It was a sacred moment when we fitted each others’s rings and swore our marriage vows.

Then we went on our honeymoon to Golden Gate Highlands National Park for ten days, where we had a fantastic time, just the two of us together, a memory to last a lifetime. Rinka moved to Cape Town, where we had Christo two years later, and Marius two years after him. Today they are 46 and 44 years old, and Heinrich will be 60 next year. Tiana died of a massive heart attack when she was 44, which was a great tragedy.

After living very happily in Wellington for 34 years, and Christo and Marius had the privilege of going through their entire school career there in the countryside, Rinka had a serious stroke three years ago that left her paralyzed on her left side. We had to move to a care home in Strand.

Rinka took care of us every day for 48 years. It wasn’t easy every day. Now it's my turn to take care of her, and I do it with love, for as long as the Dear Father still gives us time together.