When my bail hearing came up, it was on a Monday, the 27th of January 1997, and the courtroom was full. I was petrified. My nerves were shot. The courtroom was packed, the air thick with judgment. I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t feel anything except fear.

Just before the judge walked in, I turned my head to find my Mom, and there she was. Sitting quietly in the front row, trying to look brave, her eyes had a soft, reassuring smile. She smiled at me. A smile full of pain, but also full of love. I knew she was afraid, too, but she radiated a kind of strength no textbook can teach. That’s the kind of love only a mother can give. I returned a weak smile, but I knew she could see the terror in my eyes. She always could.

Bail was set at R1000 on the condition that I be admitted to Stikland Mental Institute for 30 days for evaluation to establish if I would be fit to stand trial. Among the other bail conditions, I had to stay with Mom. And that’s exactly what I did after my 30 days at the Mental Institute.

Other bail conditions included employment requirements, travel limitations, prohibition of drug and alcohol use, prohibition of owning a firearm or visiting people who possess firearms, clinical psychiatric treatment, no contact with Liz or Kegan by any means, or being anywhere near them. I had to report to the police station three times a week between 08:00 and 17:00 to sign the bail book.

From then on, I had to appear in the local Magistrates' court once a month, only to hear that the case had been postponed for another month, and so it continued for the following eighteen months, until finally a Supreme Court date was set.

For almost two years, while I waited for my trial at the High Court in Cape Town, Mom took me in, not just into her home, but into her heart, again and again, despite everything. I moved back home, not as the daughter she once raised, but as a woman broken open by shame and uncertainty.

And for nearly two years, to be exact, 18 months, while I awaited my trial date, she never wavered. She never asked for explanations. She never lectured or made me feel worse than I already did. She simply loved me and comforted me during the nights I had woken up, screaming, because I had a nightmare.

The trial lasted three and a half excruciating weeks. She was there every day. Brave. Present. Loving. She sat through every minute. Even when the weight of what was being said crushed her spirit, she never looked away. She was brave. Braver than I ever could be. But I could see the toll it was taking on her.

At night, I’d hear her cry in her room. I could hear her quiet sobs through the wall, trying to be quiet, trying to protect me from her own heartbreak, but I knew she was breaking inside. Still, she kept showing up for me every single day.

The day of sentencing arrived like a thunderstorm. “Guilty as charged”. “Return tomorrow at 09:00 for sentencing.” The courtroom was chaotic. The judge pounded his gavel, calling for silence, but the uproar swallowed his voice. The courtroom had erupted the moment the sentence was read: gasps, whispers, even muffled cries. He raised his voice, sharp and commanding, but the chaos only deepened as the journalists and flashing cameras flocked towards me like a swarm of killer bees, chasing the sensation. Looking back now, it’s baffling how some journalists treat someone else’s heartbreak as entertainment. I lived it firsthand: cameras flashing, microphones shoved in my face, every detail of my pain dissected and turned into sensation, as if I didn’t even exist as a person. At that moment, it felt like the trauma of the past three weeks was a product for them to consume, each one competing to publish the best headline.

What must have been barely two minutes of noise felt like a lifetime to me. Time stretched unnaturally, as if the walls themselves were echoing the shock. I stood frozen in the center of it all, numb and weightless, as if the floor might give way beneath me. The world was spinning, but my ears rang with the haunting stillness of disbelief.

Amongst the chaos, I didn’t hear a sound. Instead, my eyes searched for my mother. When I found her, amongst the uproar, our eyes locked for a brief moment. There were no tears in our eyes, just sadness. We didn’t cry. We didn’t speak. We just knew. And in that knowing, I found a strange kind of peace. Because no matter what the judge said, no matter what the newspapers would write, I had something no prison cell could take away: her love.

The long, exhausting wait was finally over. But not her love. That would never end. I didn’t know how many years I would be behind bars. I didn’t know how I’d survive it. But I knew one thing: she would never abandon me. And she didn’t.

That night, fear didn’t just whisper, it screamed inside my chest. I sat in my mother’s home, surrounded by the familiar comfort of her walls, yet nothing felt safe. Everything felt borrowed. Every breath, every blink, every moment suddenly carried a weight I couldn’t hold.

Tomorrow, the judge would decide how many years would be carved out of my life—and I had no control over it. Would it be five? Ten? Twenty? Could I survive it? Would I ever be free again?

While sitting at the kitchen table, the scent of her cooking, the sound of the clock ticking, these ordinary things became sacred, painful reminders of what I might lose. It wasn’t just anxiety. I knew that this was my last night of freedom. My last night outside prison bars.

My last night as “me,” before the system swallowed me whole.

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Because how do you rest when your world is about to end?

I didn’t sleep.
I couldn’t.

Because how do you rest when your world is about to end?

The first six months of my sentence were the worst. As a B-group prisoner, I wasn’t allowed physical contact with visitors. Every Sunday, Mom came to see me. We sat with a thick glass window between us, me on one side, her on the other, separated by metal, glass, and short intervals of silence. I would press my hand against the glass, wishing I could touch her. She’d sit on the other side of that glass window, smiling, telling me stories about her week, her bowling events, the neighborhood gossip.

And me? I sat there, nodding, smiling, portraying an image that I was fine, but in reality, I was dying inside.

I longed to reach through the glass, to hold her hand, to say the words I couldn’t seem to speak. “I’m sorry.” “Thank you.” “I love you.” But those words sat heavy on my tongue, refusing to come out. They got stuck in my throat every time, as if something was choking me. I couldn’t speak them, not because I didn’t mean them, but because the shame was too big, too loud, too real. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. That I loved her. That I would give anything to undo what I had done. Instead, I sat and I listened, watched the sparkle in her eyes when she spoke of her bowling trophies, and she’d won another bowling championship.

Oh, how her eyes lit up when she spoke about bowling. It was the only time I saw the same joy in her that she used to have before my incarceration. It gave me hope. It made her seem alive again. And still, every time she talked, my heart shattered a little more, because I knew I had taken so much from her, and felt the ache in my chest grow deeper. I wanted to hold her, to protect her from the hurt I created. But I couldn’t. All I could do was watch her love me through a wall of glass and a flood of guilt.

Every Sunday, she drove 80 kilometers, no matter how tired, no matter how sick, no matter how many others told her she was doing too much. Her loyalty was unwavering. She was tired. Drained. My siblings had already started complaining that she was neglecting them. And truthfully, she was falling apart.

A year in, I told her to stop coming every Sunday. It broke my heart to say it. But I knew it wasn’t fair to expect her to visit me every single weekend. So I made the decision. I told her to visit once a month. Not because I didn’t need her, not because I didn’t want to see her. I wanted to see her more than anything, but because I couldn’t bear the cost involved anymore: not the petrol, not the physical toll, not the emotional pain. She had already given up so much for me. I needed to set her free, even just a little.

She agreed, reluctantly. But I saw the pain in her eyes; I could see it crushed her when she said, “Okay.” That kind of sacrifice, the letting go, the pulling back for survival; it’s a kind of love that deserves a word bigger than “love.”