The Tribune

By DR KENNETH D KEMP

The proprietor of my after-school day care loved to watch soap operas. It was such a constant fixture of my childhood that I learned the theme song for each show long before I could properly tie my laces.

On one particular episode, a character was getting married but the wedding was interrupted by the groom’s supposedly deceased ex-wife. Still recovering from the hit and run murder of my dog, I needed a distraction and at that point I figured nothing could possibly be more exciting than getting married.

So, one day at the age of nine, I proposed to one of the girls at the day care centre. My father picked up McDonald’s every Friday after school for my siblings and me, so I offered her some fries from my Happy Meal in exchange for being my bride. She eagerly accepted the offer and in an act of good faith to commemorate our future together, I let her use the toy that came in my Happy Meal.

A few days later she decided she no longer wanted to get married but I’ve always been a glass is half-full optimistic so I proposed to her sister instead. Her sister happily agreed and the wedding was back on, plans still intact but just with a different bride so crisis avoided.

To my perpetual dismay, however, I soon realised my future wife assumed every Friday she’d automatically enjoy shared ownership of my Happy Meal toy and I am vehemently and spiritually opposed to that type of blasphemy. It was in that moment of clarity I realised I was now engaged to a tyrant, hell-bent on destroying my life, so the wedding was cancelled.

Fast forward several years later and in grade six I was about to become engaged for the third time. I fell madly in love with the prettiest girl in my class so when I overheard her say she liked chocolates, I knew a higher deity was sending me a signal to make my move. Unfortunately, we only had a half-eaten box of rum-cherry chocolates at home so I decided to give her those. I imagined explaining the missing chocolates were because I didn’t want her to get sick and she’d, in all likelihood, thank me for this phenomenal act of chivalry.

My gallantry didn’t end there. I wrapped the love-chocolates in foil since we didn’t have any wrapping paper and topped it off with a beautiful rose from our garden, glued on top to demonstrate my deep love and affection – except it wasn’t a rose it was a red hibiscus flower – but the hibiscus is The Bahamian rose, so same difference. I placed the gift in my bag and went to bed knowing in a few short hours I’d make my new fiancé the happiest girl in the world.

The next day, when flies kept annoyingly congregating around my bag, I realised the chocolates had melted all over my books. When I went to throw them away, her best friend appreciated that I must have bought them for my crush and right there in front of Mr Brigg’s homeroom class, my crush and I shared a French kiss. I was positive she was pregnant so at that point the wedding was assured. But two days later when she French kissed another boy in my class, I cancelled that wedding as well.

Thus began my roller coaster ride of navigating relationships. It’s certainly never been like the enduring connection shared by the couple featured in today’s report but how could it be since their love was eternal and the stuff dreams are made of.

This couple lived in the same settlement on Long Island. They attended the same school and church and they’d known each other since they were at least five years old. As they matured, their attraction grew and they playfully threw grapes at one another in the early years of their courtship. One day after throwing a grape, he proposed and three months later they were married. He was 22 and she was 21. They were incredibly happy and deeply in love, so much so that not long after their wedding, his brother married her sister.

Born in 1915, during the second year of the First World War, this gentleman worked tirelessly as a farmer in order to support his family. He left home from early dawn to tend to his chicken farm and his fields of corn, pigeon peas and potatoes. Given he was one of 11 children and his wife was one of seven, they were quite eager to start a family but it took them three years to have their first child; a daughter. For some time before this, his wife was desperately afraid that she might be unable to conceive, so this birth was particularly special. They had three sons consecutively after the birth of their daughter and then another three daughters for a total of seven children.

Their marriage was tested more than once, first following the death of one of their daughter, who was five months old at the time, from a heart complication. They suffered another hardship when two years later one of their sons fell off a fishing dock and drowned at five-years-old. Their intense grief was so palpable it could have broken them but they supported each other and their marriage grew infinitely stronger to the point they became inseparable.

She worked as a housewife and was well educated on the pharmaceutical benefits of bush medicine so she’d boil various leaves for different ailments and create juices for people throughout her community. She also baked often but particularly at Christmas for all her neighbours and the elderly in her church.

It was a simple but rewarding life and they couldn’t have possibly been any happier. As the years passed, he took on a job as a caretaker to a private cay and while there he suffered a stroke. Alone and barely able to walk he refused to die and leave his wife and children so he crawled slowly, carefully and with passionate determination up a hill to the main house and used a radio to contact the Bahamas Air and Sea Rescue Association (BASRA), a non-profit organisation dedicated to saving the lives of airmen and individuals distressed at sea. The family then moved to Nassau so that he could have easier access to medical care.

Over time, their strength faded. She had diabetes and they both suffered from high blood pressure. On a Sunday morning, shortly after the sun arose and following his bath, he got dressed and in a white T-shirt, khaki pants and his farmer’s hat in tow, he laid in bed and at the age of 82, one month before their 60th anniversary, he died peacefully. She was devastated and never really accepted life without him. She eventually became bed-ridden and developed a left foot pressure wound that became infected.

During their marriage, on Saturdays they’d take their children and go dancing so she cried, when her left leg was amputated to save her life, afraid that even in the afterlife she’d never be able to dance or go on walks with her husband again. She died five months later at the age of 87, shortly after the sun had set, and called her husband’s name with her few last breaths. I know the story well because these were my grandparents and the amputation of my grandmother’s leg was a driving force that led me to become a foot and ankle surgeon.

I still get together often with my first two childhood fiancés and they’re even smarter, kinder and more beautiful than they were years ago. At our latest gathering, I sat and thought of my grandparents. I smiled and prayed that they were together, laughing about all my shenanigans, holding hands and enjoying each other’s company, every day from the break of dawn until the sun finally sets.

• Nicknamed ‘The Prince of Podiatry’, Dr Kenneth D Kemp is the founder and medical director of Bahamas Foot and Ankle located in Caves Village, Western New Providence. He served as the deputy chairman for the Health Council for five years and he currently sits on the board of directors for the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation in his role as co-vice-chairman.