Pistorius Oscar - Reeva: A Mothers Story

19.8.2001

My dearest, darling daughter,

I wish you up to the moon and around the world in wonders or whatever comes to mind that you wish for.

I want to tell you now that you are a full-grown beautiful woman how proud I am of you. You were a gift from God and I have treasured every moment we have shared to date. Now is the time for you to spread your wings and fly in your own direction. I have no worries about this because you are sensible, intelligent and very clued up.

Its only your heart that may get you in trouble because its on your sleeve.

I want to tell you how proud I am of you. You always care for others and you are not self-absorbed. You are dedicated in your future and I see not only the exterior, although its beautiful, but inside I see a wealth of qualities reside there.

I love you so much and I just want the best of everything for you.

Happy 18th Birthday Reeva,

Love,

Mom xxx

26 September 2003

A whole year has gone by again, reminding us that time waits for no one and that every passing moment is an opportunity to make life that much more sweeter.

Im happy that I can spend each day with you and grab new opportunities, each time they pass, with you at my side.

I wouldnt choose anybody else to take this journey with, and nobody else can take your place.

Today is a day to say thanks for being a great person, a beautiful woman, a trusted friend, a devoted mother and most of all the best you that you can be!

I love you very much.

Enjoy the flowers, pressie, cake and loads of kisses and love all for you on this day and tomorrow and the next day and the next

Your compadre forever

Reeves xxxxx

PS: Dad says ditto for all of the above

The beginning of the nightmare.

We are up and about before dawn as usual. Barry sets off for the short drive to the stables at Arlington Racecourse to prepare his horses for their morning exercise. I potter out to greet the overzealous dogs Boyki and Gypsy the boerboels, Dax and Madonna the Jack Russells and little Moby Dick, Reevas dachshund fighting through playful paws and swishing tails to give them their breakfast. The sun rises just before 6 a.m., promising another balmy summer day. I make tea and start getting myself ready to go to work. At my age I joke my face needs three applications of sand and three of cement. Im preoccupied with thoughts about the day ahead, about supervising progress at the Barking Spider, a pub were building at the Greenbushes Hotel on the Old Cape Road, when my mobile phone rings.

Really? At this time of the morning?

A voice introduces himself as Detective Hilton Botha.

Hello, is that June Steenkamp?

Yes.

Do you have a daughter, Reeva?

Yes.

There has been a terrible accident.

What kind of accident?

Your daughter has been shot.

Pause.

Youd better tell me RIGHT NOW if shes dead or alive.

Im sorry. Im afraid she has passed on.

The detective is polite, concerned, saying he wants to inform me before I get in the car and hear it on the radio news. He says he thinks it looks like an open-and-shut case. There were only two people presentyour daughter and Oscar with the gun.

Ive heard enough.

Im hysterical, screaming, sobbing uncontrollably. This cannot be true. The worst thing in the world has happened it really has this beautiful, perfect child of mine is dead. We are, we were, mother and daughter with such a strong connection. We are the best of friends, so close we talk about everything. We even have a pact that, if one of us dies, we will let the other know with a sign that we are okay and in a good place.

How can Reeva be dead? I can still hear her chattering away to me last night, telling me that she is arriving at her boyfriends house to cook him a romantic Valentines Day dinner, that they are planning a quiet evening, that shes sending money for our cable TV subscription so that we can watch her in the new series of Tropika Island of Treasure, which airs this weekend, and that she loves me. Big kiss!

I visualise the police searching for my number on the contacts list on Reevas phone Mommy BlackBerry while she I dont let my mind go further. Imagine answering your phone at seven oclock in the morning and hearing that your daughter is dead from gunshot wounds. Its just not real. Its devastating. Our lodger David hears my anguish and comes to try and help. He says hell call my good friends Claire and Sam, and they are here in minutes, not knowing what to do because now Im almost mute with shock. I manage to phone Barry and tell him he must come home immediately.

Barry drives home from the stables thinking one of the older dogs has died. He misunderstood my hysterical sobs, because I would be upset about the dogs. When he arrives and hears the bitter truth, he goes into a truly terrifying state of shock, trembling violently, and asking over and over again how, how, can Reeva, our beautiful baby, be dead. She was our whole life, our laat lammetjie, a precious late lamb, the only child we had together, the backbone of our extended family and the glue lets be frank in our relationship. In the few minutes it took the detective to communicate the news, our lives seem to have crumbled like a sandcastle knocked by a freak wave on the beach.

The detectives words echo in my head: There were only two people presentyour daughter and Oscar with the gun. What terrible, terrible thing could have happened between two young people to precipitate this? They had known each other for scarcely three months. Reeva, I knew, was excited about and wary of this new relationship in equal measure. When it started, his infatuation was too much, but after a break, she told me she had decided to give her all to the relationship despite nagging doubts about their compatibility. He was hard to please. He could be moody and volatile. But she loved him, and admired him, especially for all he had overcome in life, and how he used that as a power to inspire other people. That was her dream too. She was a caring girl, a nurturer by nature. She wanted to help others. Was it as I had feared when she was eighteen: that her heart had got her into trouble? Did she suffer because her expectations of love were not met?

Barrys in such a state, and more friends are turning up at the house with condolences. But what can they say? They are shocked. Its too much for all of us. People from the stables start arriving to support us, the jockeys and members of the racing community whom Barry has known for the last fifty years. Somehow I manage to phone Barrys younger brother Michael, who is very involved in the church, a lay minister giving occasional sermons and so on. He runs a Christian drug rehabilitation centre outside Cape Town. Hes a lovely kind man and the only one who can calm Barry down. Barry, nearly seventy, is diabetic and not in the best of health. Hes a big, gentle man, but when he gets stressed and right now hes in torment, trying to absorb the fact that some guy he doesnt know has murdered his beloved daughter he goes from 0 to 300 in five seconds. We need to keep him calm for his health.