For most of my life, my mother was an article of faith, a reference material.
I’ve always been a clumsy boy. I have lost two phones within the last four months. I lost my high school admission letter, and the principal was adamant that I was lying, which I was, and he swore not to admit me until I confessed, which I wouldn’t. In the end, it was nepotism that put me over the edge.
Just last week, I lost my white sneakers. Don’t bother. I have lost a few girlfriends here and there, but we’ve all done that, so I’m nothing special in that regard. I am a boring loser, too. I promise to change, I ask for one more chance, Tutam, “Ya Mwisho!”, I tell her I’ll even take her last name. And still, I lose them. But even I never thought I’d lose my mother. How do you lose a mother?
Technically, for this demands a technicality, I didn’t lose my mother. She betrayed me. She told me she would hang around for a few more years, that she wanted to see her grandchildren, and see that big forehead gene strain passed on, our family heirloom. That’s what she said. “Na hio kichwa yako kubwa.” More endearing words are yet to be spoken.
My mother died on Thursday evening. 11:03pm. For most of my life, my mother was an article of faith, a reference material, like the president’s portrait of power, hanging from the anvils of my childhood. She had razor wit, and an even sharper tongue, and more often than not, I would be cut with it—be it my love for shorts, or why I have not yet made her a grandmother, or will I still wear shorts when I am a father? It is a good question.
My mother didn’t rate shorts; she thought it silly for men to show off their legs, but it would be a betrayal of feminism if I didn’t show off what my momma gave me. And I refuse to betray the movement. That said, she betrayed me first.
She never doubted me
Before she did, she made me dream too. She had more faith in me that would have been embarrassing in a much smaller woman. You could say the same about your mother, but it wouldn’t be the same. My mother’s different. She never doubted me. No problem was too big for her son. They’d tell her something went wrong, and she’d say, “Hakuna shida. Eddy will handle it.”
Even if it were you, wouldn’t you handle it? With my mother, you contributed belief, wiring it from your personal account into the joint account you held with her. She talked of being a grandmother; you added the house with a compound shimmering under Kikuyu grass and a wife who celebrates your shorts. She told you a story; you filled in the sentences. She tells you she is getting well; you make plans with her after she is cancer-free.
When the hospital called me, they delivered the news with zero conviviality. Just disappointingly plain English, like they were announcing government funds had been “misappropriated” or “auditor flags concerns over graft,” or the generic, “government funds go missing”. As if the funds were just sat in a bank account somewhere and got bored and thought, Hey, let’s go buy a dam in Arror and Kimwarer.
The doctor didn’t even look at me, just hit his pen on the table repeatedly and gave me a whinging lore about HDUs and ICUs or something like that. There was a calculated correctness in him that I admired; he sounded less like he was conversing and more like he was reciting. There was a very good possibility that he had said all this before, exactly the same way, to other little boys of other pretty mothers. He was short and stodgy, with a little gray in his hair, and from his evading gaze, I could see the onset of crow’s-feet.
His face was composed, but his eyes were darting like insects trapped inside his head, but I didn’t care about that. He was a consultant here, as he was a consultant at some other two or three hospitals. I didn’t care about that either. I wanted to know how much was needed. After he was done making himself feel better, he said, “There was nothing we could do.”
To lose a mother
Which was true. They did nothing. They let her die because they couldn’t get an ambulance on time, that they needed approval from the family to get the ambulance, that they needed funds before they could get an ambulance, that, you see, there is nothing they could do without money, except maybe let her die, and that required you to do nothing. So they did nothing. And that was everything they did.
The lesson was, anything you love so bad that everywhere you look you see how you’re going to lose it, that thing will be taken from you. Every life has a price, and ours weighed less than the air around it.
Yet even in her death my mother lay there graceful, defiant in the face of defeat, her black hair curling to reveal our family silver, that majestic forehead that I shall bequeath my descendants. Her face calm and reassured, a penumbra of light around her like a saint in a picture, half-relieved perhaps half-glad that she would not see me in shorts again.
There wasn’t any sense to make of this phenomenon. Being someone’s child is a difficult job, a position one has no right to quit. You questioned God, you questioned your faith, you questioned yourself. Could I have done more? I could, couldn’t I? Can I still?
The Grim Reaper hadn’t left too long ago, perhaps he was still in the ward where my mother lay, and if I pleaded my case, perhaps even offered an alternative candidate, say the guy in charge of calling ambulances, or even myself, maybe we could work out something? A life for a life.
I’ll never get past the picture of my mother lying lifeless. 11.03pm. 51 years old. It’s the kind of betrayal that seeps into you more insidiously, more slowly, I think, but more dangerously. It settles inside you undetected like a virus, as you relive all the memories, the unsaid words, the unreciprocated hugs. The past has invaded the present. Life, a fleeting insignificance, a brief and fragile dance in the vastness of time. It’s the Faustian bargain you sign with the devil, becoming an undercover agent for grief. You need a fix every day. Or the hangover moves in. Permanently.
I have lost many things in life, but to lose a mother is simply careless. My mother would have said, “Usijali. Eddy will handle it.” Not this time, Mom. I couldn’t handle it. In the end, it was I who betrayed her.
