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It should have been a good day for Vanessa Hawkins. After months of delay, her marriage certificate was finally ready for collection – but tragically, so was her husband Corrie’s death certificate.
A little over three months after they tied the knot, Corrie lost his battle with Covid-19, leaving the new bride a widow.
The couple had been looking forward to their long-delayed honeymoon in Mozambique at the end of year, hoping beyond hope that the worst of the pandemic would be over by then and that travel restrictions would be eased. Mozambique was where they had had a romantic holiday and fallen even deeper in love.
But it was not to be. Corrie (60) died on 3 July in the Netcare Krugersdorp Hospital after being on a ventilator for three weeks. And with him went Vanessa’s hopes and dreams of everlasting happiness.
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She was divorced and living in Vryburg in North West when Corrie entered her life. At that stage, she was reeling from her unhappy marriage and her trust in men had been shattered.
He first popped up when he sent her a Facebook message saying, “You’re so cute”. She ignored him until she discovered they had mutual friends and decided to give him a chance.
Corrie, a building inspector from Randfontein in
Gauteng, was also divorced and lonely.
“I was working night shift at a security firm and Corrie would call me,” Vanessa (54) recalls. “We’d chat until four in the morning.”
When she eventually went to visit him in Randfontein, she never left. “Shortly afterwards we went on this wonderful holiday to Mozambique,” she says.
Corrie proposed on Valentine’s Day last year while they were in Durban for a weekend break.
After Covid-19 hit, their wedding plans were repeatedly delayed until Vanessa decided enough was enough. “I said, ‘we’re getting married on 27 March, and that’s it!’”
They wed in an intimate ceremony in a friend’s garden. “I wanted to get married in a simple dress but Corrie decided to pick out a dress for me. At first, I didn’t want to, but once I put it on, it felt as if that dress had been made for me,” she says of the embroidered chiffon gown she wore on her special day.
Their wedding car was a pink Mustang she’d spotted in town months earlier.
“When I saw that Mustang, I said to Corrie, ‘That’s going to be my wedding car.’ I don’t know how, but he managed to get that Mustang for our wedding.”
Vanessa and Corrie did everything together – they went
dancing and camping, they cooked together, and they even bottled curried beans,
which Corrie loved.
“Corrie never went anywhere without me. He was straightforward and honest with me from day one. He could be blunt, but we never went to bed angry.”
Corrie put Vanessa’s past heartache to rest, says Johan van der Merwe, the pastor who married them.
“They complemented each other. But Covid robbed them of that. Now I’m having to bury Corrie just three months after his wedding day. This will be my seventh funeral in two weeks – all of them Covid.”
Corrie started feeling ill on Sunday 13 June and had himself tested the following day.
“We got the results on the Tuesday – it was positive. He started complaining of back pain and headaches and said his eyeballs felt as if they were going to pop out,” Vanessa says.
She developed symptoms too and also tested positive that week. Corrie became more and more ill and by the early hours of 20 June, he was battling to breathe. They went to two hospitals but they were full so they were turned away.
Out of options, they returned home.
The next morning they called a doctor friend who arranged
for Corrie to be admitted to the private hospital in Krugersdorp. He was sent
straight to the intensive care unit.
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His condition deteriorated rapidly. He was put on a ventilator and then in an induced coma. Vanessa, whose symptoms were manageable, was beside herself.
“People who haven’t been through it won’t know what it’s like. You spend all your time waiting, phone in hand,” Vanessa says.
Staff at the hospital did all they could but Corrie didn’t survive.
She recalls how the hospital had called her on the day
he died to say he was struggling. Vanessa was allowed to go to the ICU but as
she walked into the unit, she was met by a nurse who said, “Mrs Hawkins, he
didn’t make it.”
“You just crack,” Vanessa says. “He didn’t look good but at least he was peaceful. Now I just wander around the house. I can’t get away from anything – his clothes, his toothbrush.”
Vanessa is still struggling to accept that Corrie has been ripped away from her, just when they had both found happiness.
She hasn’t thought about the future, she says. For now, she’s focusing on the peaceful look Corrie had on his face the last time she saw him. That’s the memory she’ll cherish when he’s laid to rest.
