Widow, 78, Turns to Crochet for Healing After Husband's Death

Picking up a crochet hook after losing a spouse is not an obvious move. For Sandy de Goede, 78, it turned out to be the right one. After her husband Brian died just months after they relocated to River Club in Sandton in 2022, De Goede made a deliberate choice: find a group, show up weekly, and keep her hands moving. Four years later, she is still at it, and the crochet group she joined at Rosebank Union Church has become her primary support system and, in her own words, a source of joy.

What she did, distilled for anyone in a similar position: she sought community before craft, chose a regular weekly schedule over casual drop-ins, and leaned into a project-based hobby with a low enough barrier that you can begin on the worst possible day.

"A couple of months after we moved to River Club, my husband passed away. I was at a bit of a loss, and decided I need a group to join and to start doing something. Just a meeting place to have coffee and knit or crochet," she says. That framing matters: she was not looking for art therapy. She was looking for a reason to leave the house on a set day.

De Goede came to crochet through decades of knitting. She had a lifelong relationship with the craft before stepping away to focus on family, then returned to the needles in her 50s. "I started knitting again in my 50s on to my 60s, and then it started heading towards my 70s." The shift to crochet came later and stuck. "I now actually prefer crochet to knitting, and it actually becomes very addictive. It's actually a healing process, especially if you're going through something such as your husband passing away."

For grief days specifically, the most forgiving crochet projects share one quality: they require almost no decision-making. Repetitive granny squares worked in the same colour sequence, a basic rectangle dishcloth in single crochet, or a chunky blanket in one stitch pattern all allow the hands to keep moving while the mind rests. De Goede is currently working on a handmade crochet blanket herself, and a large, simple project has an underrated advantage during bereavement: it lasts long enough to carry you through the hard weeks, one row at a time.

The social dimension of De Goede's recovery is inseparable from the craft. "Crotchet gives you a purpose in life. You make friends who you meet for a tea or a coffee and you never get tired of it. It's just the most amazing hobby to pick up at any age," she says. Over four years of weekly meetings at Rosebank Union Church, she turned what began as a search for somewhere to sit with her grief into a way to give back and rebuild her own sense of purpose.

She walked into that first meeting already in her 70s, uncertain what came next. The answer, it turned out, was another row.