Unfinished…
When you know you have unfinished business with a person that you weren't sure you were going to get to, their dying puts you to shame.
It calls you a weakling. a slave to avoidance. It Spits in your face. Does you ntoooo.
But you beg, you say… biko, Let me explain.
“I was a child. Then I was hurt. Then I was busy. So hurt I left. Then I was overwhelmed. So hurt I just couldn't. Then I was afraid. So hurt but I forgot why. Then I didn’t care. But i i ”
You beg, not for more time, but for understanding.
Was it the, I didn't know where to start.
Or the how do I get there
Or how will they respond.
But nothing, nothing will change the fact that
My father’s mother has carried my unanswered questions, my familial turmoil, and gone to a deep sleep.
The end of an era.
Another level to my father's death, another shade of grief unimagined. Foolish me, to bet on her immortality. I was going to get around to it
But she had other plans. Some say she just had to get to the other side. Because who will cook for my father? Who will hassle him on his life decisions? Who will spend his money
Another cord, severed.
The end of an era
The ones she has left behind now have much, Or very little to contend with.
9 children alive (1, my father, & others unamed gone)
34 Grandchildren
11 Great Grandchildren (2 of which I am a steward of)
But what's the point of bringing up the pain if you can't say it to they face? If you can't tussle with them.
So you take what you can and you leave the rest.
You scalp the calluses with memories of the ‘good’
Like
fruit trees, fresh foods from the farm, the Yam barn, freshly roasted Yam and palm oil, sitting outside in the yard
cousins laying every which way all over the living room floors to asleep in the Aba or Amichi house, taking mealtime shifts by age groups
You rub the sting with the balm of the 'lessons'
Like
How to run households of neverending inhabitants
Strong Will
Run me my money, I don't care what you got going on…
Aggression and disdain with tenderness and forgiveness as playmates
That unfinished business can be working plans. but Someday you'll have to get to it, one way or another, in this life or the other