It must have been a night towards the end of August if not early September, I figure this part talks to the death certificate facts.
And I, between 9 and 10 years old.
Somewhere in the night of the above mentioned, my sister and I were woken to a shriek like nothing I could ever imagine, it was so filled, the scream... it threw the 2 of us into terror, the question of what was at the door, the question of the intense persistent knock in the early hours of the morning.
That intense scream was from my mother, someone was at the door, telling her that they had found my dad, somewhere, and he was dead, and somehow they’d found his belongings, that linked them back here. To my mother’s scream.
His heart had swelled up, hypertensive something the death note said.
The days that followed was our house filling with people, known and unknown, in unending tears. They were all there to mourn my dad.
This is where my battle with the feel started. I didn’t cry. Not the day of the scream in the middle of dawn, not the days that followed as I watched everyone I love fall prey to this emotion that I never quite understood,
The days progressed, more people, more crying, and my mother, unseen and unreachable, while we played outside.
I remember my uncle trying to explain what had happened, just outside the house, as my sister broke into tears, I looked into his eyes as he told us we’d never see our father again, I’d figured this.
The morning of the funeral, the norm, an open casket, it was the same the night before, we saw him before we went to bed, and again in the morning as someone tried to dress us and ready us for the service. The whole house was filled with tears.
The first of the tears I found was as the casket slowly dropped towards the earth... I’d made sense of my dad, never waking up.. and I never seeing him again... it was shortly after wed thrown sand in the hole and casket… when I ran back, running towards my dad, running to be with him…I had never wanted to do this life without him, he was my team.. we’d done many things together… we were netball buddies at home, he woke me when he arrived home in the AM to cook something to fill what I now realize to be the munchies but also served as Sunday lunch, we sat a few nights where I watched him cook as he told me how much he loved us. He had carried a lot of pain I now realize. And me, being daddy’s little girl meant every moment was ours, from watching soapies on his head as I plaited his hair and the morning fight, every morning to take my knots out and make his afro small for work, to not letting anyone take me to bed but my dad, this meant I saw many passed out nights on the couch, waiting for him, and many nights with him, as he told my sister and I how much he’d dreamed of us and how much he loved us, his unimaginable dream that had become true, he had a family, as he cried and we, an endless ‘yebo Baba’. He said his life was complete.
Back to where I found my tears, as I ran, I remember the catching as I leaped forward to go with him, I didn’t want my life without him. The tears came down.
I never saw these tears for probably another 5 years if not more.
I’d lost the love of my life… he was never coming back… and they wouldn’t let me leave with him.
I can’t remember a time when the pain has been this intense.
This year has been a lot, and I want nothing more than to pass out on the couch and be carried to bed by him, to being woken up at dawn on a Saturday morning to cook the Sunday meal and him toasted, in a large mist of silence and intense ‘what are we making’ between the stealing of chicken pieces that could never fit in my mouth whole.
I’ve never felt so desperate and my heart a cave, I’ve never missed him this much.
My anchor.
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