In Loving Memory of My Mom

 

On Thursday, 30th June 2022, my brother dropped by my place in Watamu. He had business in Mombasa, and Malindi, and decided to drop by and say hello to me and his niece. We made tea, and spoke about home. The worry was our mom’s state of health and I kept telling him:

“Si tumwambie ajaze early retirement, I think she needs to slow down,” he told me she doesn’t go when she’s not feeling well, and the school management is very supportive.

In fact, she hadn’t been in school for close to a month. We talked about her retirement and how the upcoming change was probably stressing her out. See mom was 59, and the current age of retirement is 60.

We talked about the heart failure diagnosis given by Nairobi West Hospital on 15th June, and he told me the upcoming clinic-slotted for Tuesday the coming week, would help figure out the best medical intervention.

Then my bro left for Nairobi. I assured him I would head out when Ayanna finished her exams.

On Sunday, the 3rd of July, I woke up at around 6 am and started crying. No reason, just woke up and got all emotional for nothing.

At around 8.00am, my brother called me.

“There has been a small emergency, and you need to come home immediately,”

I was thrown into a fit of anxiety, I paced around the house trembling, and then called my therapist.

She asked me what was happening. I explained to her what I suspected was happening. She told me this:

“I know you want to book the next flight, jump or run to Nairobi-but please don’t. I know you want to call someone else who will be more forthcoming with the details, but please don’t. Just sit through it the whole of today, calm down, and enter the dynamic tomorrow or the day after, when you are more in charge of your emotions. If the worst has happened, running there will not change the circumstances.”

I booked the night bus, went back to the house and spent the next seven hours listening to binaural beats. I deactivated social media because I did not want to hear ‘breaking news’ from friends and villagers. You know how disrespectful people get.

At around 5pm, I packed for myself and Ayanna. The entire night in the bus was also a good thing because it helped me go through the initial shock and get back to a place of being grounded. In the wee hours of the morning, I found a voice note from my therapist.

“Now, I want you to know that you might be walking into a highly charged emotional situation. People cry, others climb trees and wail, others roll on the ground-but remember everything I have taught you about refusing to get enmeshed in other people’s feelings. Feel and express your feelings alone,”

When I got home, everyone had calmed down, relatively. Nobody actually told me the words-I think I also didn’t want to hear them. I hadn’t called my childhood friend or told her anything-but I found her at home waiting for me. She stayed with me every single day for the entire week. You guys, true friendship is everything.

But when the visitors of the second day left, I spoke to my sister and she explained to me how it happened. They had spent the Saturday at an Aunt’s wedding- they had come back and spoken into the wee hours of the morning. Mom had asked my little sister to take a good photo of her in case a portrait was needed-we ended up using it for the obituary and the casket portrait.

Mom also kept telling my sister that her own Dad had passed on at her age 59, also from heart failure ( My grandfather passed on in 1987). Everything else she said that night was a spoken will-only that at the time, nobody knew it. I think her soul knew it was time. And she went out with a bow-100 percent prepared.

In the evening, it was decided that the burial day would be Friday. This gave us three days to get everything ready.

My cousin and I went to look for a casket on Tuesday. Previously, I’d never be caught alive near a shop that sells funeral supplies. It was Bizarre, I was there-asking questions like whether it is made of real wood and if the size was appropriate-but I don’t think I had internalized that I was picking a casket for my own mother.

On Wednesday I sat with my grandmother (mother’s mom), Aunties and uncle, and we wrote mom’s Eulogy. My grandmother looked defeated, and that really broke my heart. Even on the burial day, she couldn’t find the words.

Man, writing your own mother’s eulogy is like Universal Violence slapped on your face. The same wonderful tribute I had written for my mom on 8th May-Mother’s Day, was now a final story to read to strangers. I was there, but still-spectating.

I kept having this thought-

“Sasa hawa wanaongelea nani surely? My mother cannot die,”

The following day my small sister and I went shopping for a dress for her. We picked this beautiful peach dress with sequins for embroidery. The shop attendant kept saying things about how decent it looks on a woman and I couldn’t tell her what it was for. The last time I had shopped for mom was some 3 nice Deras that I sent with my sister when she went back home from my place in May.

Then on Thursday evening, we saw the obituary on Inooro- I still thought:

“Wanaongea kuhusu nani hawa sasa…?”

I think it sank on the morning of Friday, 8th July when we were standing outside the Montezuma Funeral home and the announcer called out the family of Esther to go into chapel 2.

My childhood friend, also a student of my mom’s was still with me-I told her I’m not going in. She held me by the waist and told me I have to. My therapist had also told me not to skip any step, from viewing the body to throwing in the soil and planting the flowers.

My legs almost gave out moments before I got to the front of the casket. But she was so peaceful- and everyone kept saying this. That there was nothing chaotic about mom’s passing. She slept serenely, and you could actually mistake her for just a sleeping person.

The rest of the day was manageable, I even read the tribute without breaking down. Seeing everyone else being so strong also helped.

Most importantly, this was the first time when the Universe handed me massive doses of healing before I needed it. The close to two years of healing the inner child with my therapist, Transformational Coaching, and overall spiritual awakening dissolved my ego- and helped me stay in the path of least resistance. I had worked out and resolved most of my mother wounds beforehand, which means I wasn’t left without closure.

There’s a verse in Isaiah which says:

‘I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born.”

To every person in my inner circle- I treasure you, and every amazing way you have come through for me and my family.

We shall rise.