Rethinking Death. I dare try!
A reflection on mom's passing and the painful plight of death itself.
Hey, y’all
Sunday was my mom’s Birthday. She departed this life in August 2021. I was contemplating whether to bring something new or present this piece for this week. Evidently, I settled on this one because it felt more appropriate at the time.
I hope you love it as much as I do.
Originally published on: Feb 24, 2022
A couple of days back, I was watching the 2005 Steve Job commencement speech at Stanford. He mentions that in 2004 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was told he had less than six months to live. To quote verbatim, he says, “The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is a doctor’s code for preparing to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means making sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.” The part that strikes me dearly is being told to go get his affairs in order.
I am born, bred, and mostly natured in Zimbabwe. My father was one of the stereotypical stay-away Black men. Times have changed, though. Greatly too. When I was a year old, my mother migrated to the United States. I knew her only from the pictures and voice over the phone. And that was the relationship for about twenty-one years. Fast forward to the year 2021, she and I finally reunited. A huge act of God is the way I looked at it. I’m not very privy to the details about memory for a baby when they are a year old, but what I can say is I remember nothing. This means I was seeing my mother for the first time and were about to learn all about her. I land in the United States as a 23-year-old, now with a deep voice and a massive beard. Good luck bonding with that mother!
August, the same year that I made my escape from the always-promising-to-be-better Zimbabwe, she left this earth a victim of cancer—a huge dagger to the heart and existence. I got to spend at most five months with her here in the States. She had left Zimbabwe when I was barely two years old. The first months of her passing were traumatic.
I can describe the feeling differently now, although remnants of those effects still linger in my mind and encompass my existence.
This is what I wrote when the feelings were still deadly ripe:
I know of a painful silence.
When the noises of the chaotic world are inexistent. When you are alone with your thoughts. When you’re in tune with the moment. A silence filled with absence. A silence uncomfortable. A silence very unbearable.
It's like I can still hear your voice echoing from the corners of our small apartment. A voice pregnant with passion and hope. Ever so optimistic about God. When the sun bows and the day is swallowed by the thick darkness, the memories come alive. Today was a little more intense. I had to sit and vaguely try to converse with time, hoping the heaviness within may be emptied.The cuts of heartbreak are profoundly pronounced although invisible. If you cut the heart, we do not bleed. For shame death. Could you not have asked whether we were ready? Well, we may possibly never be ready, but probably there could’ve been a different, better time. Time. Could you not have stood still? Pain! Could you and your malicious soldiers not have waved a white flag and stood down? Maybe the silence can speak. But silence in the house is deadly. The TV and soulful Afrobeats or Amapiano sounds emerging from my Bluetooth speakers are hardly audible. The thoughts are even louder.
I was only two years old when you left me ma. Time had you fend for me from miles away. I grew up not to desire the validation of a mother, but only money for school fees. Even worse, the validation of a father. The father was a stay-away dad. What could I have done? Relationships like these are hardly taught, especially at an early age, when nature designed emotional bonding as ideal. I turned out great. I'd love to believe so. Especially for a time like this.
I see you a lot. I hear you a lot. In this silence, your presence is manifest. And that’s just about the problem. I’m very emotional. I cried watching the Big Bang Theory Season finale. The Office likewise. And the same goes for a multitude of other movies. Small things move me. They push me to the edge but somehow seeing you go didn’t bring out my side. I was quick to justify it. I had not formed a deeper bond with you in the five months I had been with you before we were separated for eternity. I was wrong. And I always knew I was wrong. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be strong. And strong I was. But to what end? Because in the silence you breathe on.
When I err, I find myself feeling your existence even more. It's like you’re trying to talk to me. I see you in my dreams. I had a dream that someone else followed you to the afterlife. I used to have dreams when Umkhulu; my grandfather passed away. And I so dearly revered my pa greatly. It's a pity you couldn’t be there to say goodbye to him. I can only imagine how that may have been. Being the very sensitive and emotional being you were. Your dad would talk to me in dreams. I would see him. And one dream would play a lot in different versions but with the same plot. It was the same with his passing. Whenever I found myself doing something wrong, I would feel his presence.
‘Death is a necessary end’ writes Shakespeare. ‘It will come when it will come.' The necessities can be contemplated for eternity, but what we all knew for a certainty was that it would come. For you. For me. For all of us. All things considered, we can age and be affluent, marry, and build, but the dependence on our mothers will forever be there. Knowing that reality is not so for you, scares the peace out of the precious heart. What hurts are the ‘what-ifs’…
One thing I found amazing was how much about her she told me. About her life before she came to America. About her early life in America. Her later life. Finding friends. Moving places. Getting a job. In a very short space of time, I got to know a lot about her. While watching Steve Jobs’ speech, it struck me: maybe that was her getting her affairs in order. I know, it’s speculation. But every time we were together at home, and we were always together at home a lot, she would just pull up a story from nowhere and flow with it. Without context. Almost all the time.
Saturday is an unofficial movie night for me and my brothers. This one time, I watched ‘Then Came You’ with the oldest of my two brothers. I’m the big brother, just so you know. The movie follows the life of a British teenager who knows she has Cancer and is going to die soon. The girl becomes friends with a boy his age who is a hypochondriac working as an airport baggage handler. She enlists him to help her carry out her eccentric bucket list. Spoiler alert: the girl dies, eventually.
What stood out for me in the movie was the audacity and deliberateness the girl had in saying her goodbyes by doing everything she would have wanted to do alive. I guess all I’m saying is, that painful possibility could be extended to a certain energy that makes us wish to live every day like it was the last.
I still believe there was a lot that Mom could have told me or left for me even in those treacherous moments. We are brought up in institutions of faith and hope and sometimes those cloud reality. And that’s okay. I wish the two possibilities could mutually exist. But that would mean acceptance of the painful possible reality of death. An unbearable reality to a mother with kids that hardly have it figured out.
Her passing came with a couple of ripple effects. Several relationships were sabotaged in the healing process. Social interactions changed to a feeling of non-essential. There was a mental series of questioning of beliefs that be.
What usually hurts people the most is really the what-ifs. Those still linger in my mind, our minds, and shall for a long time. The endless possibilities that lay ahead. The questions that were left unanswered. The things said and should not have been said. The things that should have been said but were not said. The bridges that needed burning and some building. Those stones shall never be turned. Maybe peace. Making peace with those relentless thoughts of what could’ve. And so, it’s the peace we shall pray for.
We are all dealt a different hand of cards to play in this life. And we live with the hope that the ones we have are good enough to satisfy a well-lived life. We cannot speak for the ones who have gone before us. We can only make promises to them. Making promises to the future, that we will live and not exist.
With this, we can hope that when the sun rises, they smile at us from the heavens above.
Better late than never right? IFYKYK
Ps: I have free copies of “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. If you’d like either of these, DM me on my Instagram.
Thanks for the suggestion of "Then Came You" I've just added it on my watchlist