Chester Was Our World

The Williams family tell YOU how they’re battling to come to terms with losing the man they loved so much.

- Carol Coetzee

SHE wakes up in the night sobbing and still half asleep reaches for her husband in bed next to her. But he isn’t there – instead her twins have crawled into bed with her.

This is how it goes, night after night. She wants to block it out but there are just too many reminders of him – including his lingering scent, his clothes, his toiletries, his shoes.

Maria Williams was able to put on a brave face as she expressed her gratitude to the thousands of supporters at memorial services, telling them how much her husband, rugby icon Chester Williams (49), had loved them.

But back home she can’t hide what she’s feeling.

“To the world, he was Chester Williams,” Maria says. “But to us, he was the world.”

The tears flow as she recalls the nightmare events of Friday, 6 September.

It began like any other day. At around 5am Maria cheerfully woke their twins, Matthew and Chloe (15), to get ready for school. They live on the outskirts of Cape Town and she and Chester decided last year to move their kids to Rondebosch Boys’ High and Rustenburg Girls’ High in the city’s southern suburbs, she explains. “It’s a long way to go, but together in the car we’d always get a chance to talk about anything and everything with our teens without interruption. That morning it was Ches’ turn, little knowing it would be his last time,” she says, her eyes misting over.

When she fetched the twins from school that afternoon, Chester phoned to say he was waiting for them at home, ready to take the kids to gym with him. Maria felt grateful as she drove home.

“I thought I was so blessed to have healthy, bright children and their dad who couldn’t spoil us enough. That night he’d make us a great potjie meal again.