PPBlessing

Grief rips you apart. Limb by limb, part by part, one piece at a time until there’s nothing left. I’ve heard a few people say “give it time.” But how much time does one really need to get over grieving? A day, week, month or years?

I’m one who has been brutally caressed by grief, one time too many. And each time, it lives a bitter after taste, like Aloe Vera, Bitter Cola, and Bitter leaf mixed together into a drink. It sucks away the juice in you and leaves you limp and useless like an orange whose juice was mercilessly squeezed out.

First, it was my brother. Then, my mother, and then my niece. Each episode was different. Each pain, excruciating. There was tears, silence, denial, rage, questions and many in betweens. But recalling all three at once will be too much for my fragile heart and take a zillion words to portray. So, let’s just talk about the first; Godwin Aonduhumba.

I remember it like yesterday, seeing him laying down, face up on that piece of slab, covered with a white sheet up to his chin. As I drew closer to look at his face, I wished I’d wake up and it will be a dream. A nightmare. And I’d have called Dgolo to talk about having a terrible nightmare that he had died. But you see, this nightmare wasn’t a nightmare, it was my reality, his reality, our reality.

He lay there lifeless, eyes closed, breath gone, body cold. I held his hands but unlike the zillion times before today, he didn’t hold mine back. His eyes didn’t light up with a smile seeing his baby sister hold his hand. He just lay there, dead. He was the first dead body I’d ever see. Hence when we began to see cadaver the following year, a lot of my course mates wondered why I never flinched nor complained.

The months following his departure were a blur, our room became a constant reminder that this wasn’t him being away in school. It wasn’t a goodbye that would become a welcome home when the semester ends. It was a forever goodbye. I remember picking out the clothes he wore for his funeral, he had always said looking good was good business so I painstakingly made sure he’d look good. I’d played the conversation that we would have had.
“Sannu Shagba, kayan sun yi,” and I’d laugh and tell him that was the aim. To wow everyone who’d be there when he stood up from the coffin and we went back home together.

How mistaken I was, he let the earth swallow him up. I cried for days after the burial, remembering conversations we’ve had about books, songs, medicine, research, the girls who liked him and he was absolutely too clueless to notice and the boys who wrote me love letters. Every Godwin reminded me of him, every further math equation was a reminder that I’d lost my go-to-person for such complications.

I’m not even actively counting but I remember clearly, it’s been 11 years and 8 months since he left. Have I healed? Yes, I have but it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten. A lot of people I’ve interacted with have this false notion that when you heal, you’ll forget, but, over time, I’ve realized that to be untrue. Healing does not take away the memory, it does not take away the occasional tears. Instead, it gives you strength to push past the pain and tears that come whenever you remember. It gives you peace, knowing that one day, you’d also be a memory for someone and that when that day comes, there’d be a reunion with those that had gone before you.