A long wait to be together

PETA KROST MAUNDER

Theirs was that kind of love affair.

Leonie had wanted to be buried next to Hardy and believed she had booked the site next to his. However, the Chev had her site booked close to her parents, Bokkie Niselow – once the biggest cattle farmer in South Africa and owner of SA Meat, a chain of butcheries around the country – and his wife, Miriam.

The tree that had been standing next to Hardy’s gravesite at the time of his burial had been removed and there was a space next to him. But somehow, the gravesite had not been booked.

“I am not surprised – as it was in their lives, so it is in their deaths,” said Rabbi Goldman, who has known Leonie for as long as he was at Sydenham Highlands North Shul. Bokkie Niselow was involved in building the shul, which was opened in 1955. His name is inscribed on the Foundation Stone in the wall at the entrance to the shul.

Just as Leonie waited to lie beside her man eternally, so she waited to marry him in life.

On February 28 2011, Hardy and Leonie finally married. By then they were two geriatrics under the chuppah. She was in her late 70s and wheelchair-bound, and he was 85 and balancing on his walker. This had been a long time coming; they’d had to wait to be together

Leonie and Hardy were childhood sweethearts. As young adults, they fancied the idea of spending their lives together. But this was not to be – because Leonie’s father had other plans.

Leonie was an heiress and an only child. Her father wanted his beloved daughter to marry a man who would go into the family business and run SA Meat. Alas, Hardy did not fit the bill. A talented gemologist, he fled his hometown of Munich, in Germany, as a child – together with his sister, Maisie Snoyman – when Hitler came to power.

Hardy had other ideas for his future, so under duress, the two sweethearts parted ways.

Leonie met and married Ralph Shein and had three daughters. After 25 years together, when they felt their daughters were old enough to manage on their own, the couple divorced.

Not long after, Hardy and Leonie were reunited. He had spent the years apart making a success of his jewellery business and travelling. While he had girlfriends in almost every country, he never married. In truth, when he reunited with Leonie and they began their lives together, they didn’t really consider a wedding.

They believed that getting married was not something people their age needed to do. But they lived together and their families and friends accepted them as a couple.

For more than 30 years they lived this way, in sickness and in health. Leonie suffered a stroke two years before they married and Hardy was at her side. Although unwilling to move into a retirement home with full-time care, Hardy realised that it was necessary for his beloved’s sake to do so. So, together they gave up their independence and moved.

It was when Hardy was diagnosed with a tumour and doctors said he wasn’t strong enough for surgery, that he had an epiphany. This experience triggered his decision to ask Leonie, whom he affectionately called “my woman”, to marry him. She agreed.

Hardy wanted to do the honourable thing and become a married couple in the eyes of G-d and society, no matter how far down the line they were. So, more than 50 years after falling in love, the two married.

Two years later, Hardy passed away and on Tuesday 1 May, so did Leonie.

On Thursday, the Chev only needed two hours to dig the grave for Leonie to be beside Hardy. And so, while the funeral ceremony took place in the ohel, the burial took place two hours later than expected.

As they were eventually together in life, so they are in death.