“Grief does not change you, it reveals you.”
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form” are just some of the many unpopular orthodox phrases I could hear people trying to comfort me with. They said that time heals all wounds, but they presumed that the source of my grief was finite. But for me, it is an overwhelming sense of abandonment, a feeling of helplessness, an awareness of the fragility of life, the pain of separation and the fear of the unknown future.
I had lost someone I couldn’t live without, and my heart was badly broken, and the bad news was that I could never completely get over the loss of her. Some said that the fact that she will live forever in my broken heart that doesn’t seal back up was good news. And that I would eventually come through, but to me it was like having a broken leg that could never heal perfectly—that would still hurt when the weather got cold, but nevertheless I had learnt to dance with the limp and endure the pain. Though this was just but a fact, I didn’t have the courage to.
In an instance, happiness had become an illusion to me, like it had to all other youths who had lost it. Throughout my childhood I knew I was wretched for the days were full of truth less ideals which had been instilled into me but when she passed away, I came into contact with the real, and it bruised and wounded me. Still lost in sobs, I looked into the past. It was like a candle in great distance: too close to let me quit yet too far to comfort me. She was gone.
I couldn’t stop asking, why Sarah?
She was the most beautiful, tender and harmless girl in our class.
I was young then, and I don't know if this was the case in other school but admitting that you loved someone was a punishable crime. Though some had the courage to do it, I wasn't them. I denied that it every time they ever told me I'm dating her. But to some extent I really cared about her. It was just two months before KCPE when she passed away, due to hypovolemic shock, I didn't know what that meant then. I just couldn't believe it. I used to believe that dying was for old people, though I had lost a friend who was in his early twenties the previous year, I felt that Sarah was too young to have really died. I wanted to cry but I couldn't because I was in school. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't true but I knew it was. It was so sudden that it pained me. That evening back home at my room I sobbed. I told my sister and she comforted me.
During her burial, everyone from our class was asked to attend but I didn't. I just couldn't bear it seeing her casket go down the tomb. The thought of having to pick soil into my hands and throwing it in her grave killed me. I locked myself in the classroom and sat at a desk in the corner. Most of the teachers had gone too so I wasn't afraid of being caught. Right there I replayed moment of life together since we met, how she was asked to be my desk mate after joining, how the teacher asked me to "take care of her" and how our bond developed over time. Back then I didn't understand anything but now I feel it deep. Now I know that she had become part of me.
I especially remembered how we had divided our desk into two, she wrote her name onto her part of the desk and her surname happened to cross into my desk territory, and that's when I started joking about her wanting to make Malusi my name since that was her surname. Over time I adopted the name arguing that she was mine, though that was just kidding her, because it was already my family name.
I knew that time soothes all sorrow and that later I would be contented that I knew her, and that she was my friend, but what pained me so much was the fact that I was so coward, that I never really told her that she was my friend, that I never publicly admitted that we were close and that I didn't even have the guts to say good-bye to her. I couldn't process thoughts and emotions as I can now and I eventually ended up breaking down. The only thing I had left of her was her social studies exercise book which was just a few pages due to her cute handwriting and a scar on my hand from the wound I got trying to sneak into her school and ask for a science paper we were to do that morning, I know that sounds ridiculous. I lost the book eventually, but not the scar.
I had a friend, Joy, Sarah’s best friend who I always stood next to, but she wasn’t Sarah and it was Sarah that I wanted. I had teased fate by living in the most on-the-edge, In-the-moment sort of way but my luck never ran out yet she was the most reserved person I knew and now she was no more. I later made a realization that no amount of right was bringing her back. She wasn’t playing a prank either and she wasn’t going to pop up someday laughing hysterically and giggle “gotcha!” even if I waited for a lifetime. She was gone and I had to accept that.
It's so curious how I could resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief, especially when in class, but then someone makes a friendly sign behind a window, or someone accidentally mentions her name and everything collapses. And I would end up standing in a forest of sorrow, and imagine how I could never find my way to a better place. Grief is the price I paid for love. It’s been nine years now, and I'll always cherish her memory. May her soul rest in peace.
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