Waiting To Exhale

Get Me to 21 is the story of Lead SA activist Jenna Lowe. Lowe was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare illness that in the end, after a double lung transplant, led to her untimely death, four months before her 21st birthday.

The Call – Wednesday, 10th December 2014

Keurbooms Strand

I am in a restless, dream-filled sleep when my befuddled brain hears the distant sound of my cellphone ringing. It's unusual for me to sleep this late. Sleep-induced fog turns to high alert, nerve endings flash hot and my heart starts thumping. I grab for the phone before I’ve even remembered where I am.

For seven months I’ve been hot-wired to this phone, every cell in my body straining and waiting for it to ring. I take it with me to the toilet, to the kitchen, to do the grocery shopping… or just simply to walk down the passage to check in on Jenna, my 20-year-old daughter. I listen for it constantly, awake or asleep, and I jump involuntarily every time it rings, my heart in my throat.

And while waiting I barely leave Jenna’s side. I barely leave our suburb. I have certainly not left Cape Town. But now, today, I am not at home. I am not there to sit on the edge of Jenna’s bed, to check her pump, to mix fresh medication for the day; to stroke her hair, make her tea and calm her. I’m not there to check the colour of her lips and the nuances of her energy levels.

I am not there.

I'm not at home when The Call finally comes. Instead I am six hours away up the east coast in Keurbooms Strand, a tiny village just outside Plettenberg Bay, with my younger daughter, Kristi. Yesterday I found my first-ever pansy shell in the shallow waters of Keurbooms beach and proclaimed with a hopeful heart that this might just be a sign. Last night I did something totally out of character: