Grief and guilt

I am about to share something I hardly ever talk about. It’s not that I keep it a secret, but I just never seem to have the energy to talk about it. It’s not that I have the energy today, but sometimes, you gatta do what you gatta do when you need to face your devils and demons and black holes. No one ever slayed a demon by running away from them.

So, indulge me. I have a request though; I do not want sympathy. Over two decades, the amount of sympathy I have received cannot run out even if I lived to be as old as Methuselah of the Bible.

Loss. Specifically, loss of a child. I had a son. He would be twenty one today #gasp. He only lived for eight months. No, he was not sick. No, he did not have an accident. He was only teething and we had both spent a very uncomfortable night. When morning came, I took him to a dispensary nearby. I was tired and sleepy and I guess not paying much attention, that is how I forgot to ask the doctor what he was injecting into his little veins. Too late, it turned out it was penicillin. I come from a family with a history of penicillin allergies – one time I got a shot and let’s just say I was lucky I worked in a hospital and help was nearby. My boy was not that lucky and within minutes, he was gone. Dead. Just like that.

What happened after that is still hazy. Sometimes it feels like a movie – like it didn’t happen to me, that I was part of the audience and not the main character. One moment I was a breastfeeding mother, the next I was a mother of a dead child. I remember not reacting. I remember making what must have sounded like a bad joke call to the father. I remember his little body being carried to the mortuary. I remember people coming to offer condolences. I remember throwing up when his coffin was lowered. Most of all, I remember not crying. I believe I thought crying meant that I had let him go. 

For a decade, I did not shed tears for him. I did not talk about it either, not even with the father.

I however remember many, many years, even now once in a while, blaming myself for his death. What kind of a mother does not tell the doctor that their child has allergies? What kind of a mother lets their child die in their arms? I started wishing death on that doctor because when the blame was too much for me to bear; I started looking for people to share the burden, so I blamed the doctor for not asking, for not saving him when I deposited his limp body. Later, I learned the doctor did actually die, then I started feeling guilty for wishing him dead.

One thing I was sure about, I was not going to have more children. I was convinced I was not fit to be a mother. But God works in mysterious ways because I am a mother of two awesomely awesome girls. They know about their brother and when we count members of our family, they count Mike too. I have never taken them to the grave but I intend to, I just need to meditate on it.

So yeah, for ten years, I did not mourn him. I did not visit his grave either. His father did and looked after it until he left the country. I felt guilty about that too. His little body is amongst many little bodies in Lang’ata. So this one time, I went for a burial there and decided to visit him. I walked there alone. Strangely, even after so many years and so many newer baby graves surrounding him, I located him within minutes. And I cried. And cried. And cried. Passersby stopped to ask if I was okay, I ignored them and cried. I sat on the grave. I ran my hands over it and apologized, I do not know what I was apologizing for. I told him I missed him, and I really did. Then I noticed whoever engraved his gravestone had got his date of birth wrong. I laughed hysterically. Passersby looked at me with concern, I ignored them and continued laughing. The relief I felt was so immense, I felt ready to fly. I told him that I would live life on his behalf as long as God lets me grace His earth

Talking about mixing up dates; I never remember the day he died. It could be April or June, or even December. But I never forget his birthday.

Then I paid one of those Lang’ata grave attendants to clear it up and plant flowers. I promised myself I would have the dates corrected, I still have not. At some point I will. I have gone to visit him many times since, every time I cry, but I also smile. I take flowers whenever I go, and I do not even like flowers. I like to imagine he would have loved to give his girlfriends flowers.

I do not understand why people take photos of burials but to each his own. Recently, I tore up all those photos of Mike. I do not know why anyone would want to sit and go through an album of sad photos. His photo however has a spot in my mother’s sitting room. Those two loved each other so much. His photo is also juxtaposed with those of my daughters. He was alive when they were taken.

So yeah, grief and guilt. Those two go together. As much as death is inevitable and we do not have the luxury of choosing how and when we die, we still think we can control it. When our loved ones die, we always think there was something we could have done that we did not do, to save them. Not true, unless of course, you are the direct agent of death who shoots or poisons or stabs.

I joined this grieving mothers group (no longer active, there is only so much you can say about death) and the common factor was how much guilt they all carried. Some carried guilt for even deaths caused by cancer. They felt like failures in the eyes of the society. Discussing their children’s death is a taboo subject because you know, they are afraid of being judged. I know this because I felt like that for a long time.

Not anymore. Mike died. I think about him every day, true story. I am not always sad when I think about it. I discuss him with family and friends and we laugh at the stuff he used to do. I can now talk about him and not cry. I have not shed a tear while writing this. It’s his birthday today, I cannot go crying. I choose to remain positive in my grief. I choose to live life for him.

And there you have it. We all carry major emotional scars, but we must not let the scars define us.

Keep resting with the angels Michael.