I Remember Nothing

After being a victim of a crime that left him traumatised in 2016, Gerrie Kachelhoffer has woken up each day with no memory of his life or family

- Jacques Myburgh

EVERY morning for the past five years has started the same way. Over and over he’s had to learn the intimate details of a life that should be familiar to him: his own.

“You wake up and feel this place is yours but you don’t really know what’s going on,” Gerrie Kachelhoffer says.

Fortunately every morning brings another constant: the presence of someone whose name and face he can’t quite place. Then she introduces herself to him again: “I’m your wife.”

And for about an hour – as she’s done every morning since the traumatic incident that made him suppress his memories – Yvonne Kachelhoffer tells her husband of 26 years about himself, his family and his world.

“I make sure I wake up before him. As soon as he’s awake, I’m with him,” she says.

“Then I start to tell him that something happened to him in 2016 and that’s why he can’t recall anything.”

‘EVERY MORNING I HAVE TO TELL HIM ABOUT THE PANDEMIC, MASKS AND SOCIAL DISTANCING. IT’S A SHOCK EVERY TIME’

She tells him about their lastborn, Ansuré (3), and that he’s now a grandpa.

Gerrie (47) doesn’t recognise Ansuré, the late addition to their brood. He’s come to recognise his two grown-up daughters, Su-Mari (24) and Anneri (21) but, as with Yvonne (48), he struggles to put a name to the face.

Su-Mari, her husband, Warren Joubert, and their six-week-old baby, Isabella, live with her parents and she has to introduce herself to her dad every morning.