This essay, written by a grade 11 learner in KZN, is one of the most powerful and raw things you’ll read this week.
Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal (11 September 2025) – Hilton College is beaming with pride this week after Grade 11 learner Guy Fender wrote an English essay so beautiful it earned him a rare 100%.
It’s going viral now, with over 2000 shares and 10,000 likes on social media.
It’s the kind of storytelling that makes you stop in your socks.
At just 17, Guy managed to write with the kind of honesty and restraint that usually comes with years of experience. His essay explores grief, memory and the nuanced complexities of family.
“The hospice nurse called just after dawn, voice soft, rehearsed. I could hear birds outside her window. Too bright for the hour. ‘Your mother passed sometime in the night,’ she said. ‘We think around three a.m.’ But that wasn’t the first call I’d missed. I didn’t tell her that. Just said thank you, scribbled ‘dead’ next to Mum’s name on a grocery list which I wasn’t going to finish, and made a cup of tea.”
Guy’s fictional essay tells the story of a boy coming to terms with the death of his mom after her battle with cancer. It’s told in small, everyday details. The way grief so often shows up in real life.
What strikes hardest is how a grade 11 learner knows how to so gracefully balance tenderness with bluntness. Scribbling ‘dead’ on a grocery list, or muttering ‘you win’ at sea. These little details cut more deeply than melodrama ever could.
“I took her ashes to the beach last weekend. Wore the cracked shoes again. It rained, of course. Wind smacked me in the face like it knew who I was. I walked to the end of the pier and opened the cheap plastic urn. ‘You win,’ I muttered. It wasn’t dramatic. The ashes just kind of hung in the air for a second before blowing sideways, sticking to my sleeves and the inside of my mouth. Like salt. I stood there for a long time. Didn’t cry. Didn’t move. Just stood.”
It speaks to something universal. Loss, love, and the often complicated ways we remember those closest to us.
And perhaps most of all, it makes you feel hopeful. If this is what a South African high school learner is producing, the future of storytelling is in very good hands.
Read the full piece below.
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