LONG STORY SHORT, I SURVIVED

In early July, I felt a strong urge to start a new blog where I could share my life experiences and also encourage other people who are going through different hardships. In my mind I had the struggles that I had gone through in my early years of life. Little did I know there was just another huge one waiting for me and secretly laughing at me that what I considered as troubles were nothing compared to what was to come.

Anyway as most of you know, I lost my mother (Aunt Eliza as I fondly called her) almost two months ago. I keep on saying that her death remains the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. I still get shocked every time I think about it. Is it because my mum was sick for five days only and just like that she left? Maybe. Sometimes I feel like it's because I had talked to her the day before she became unconscious and she was in the office and very fine. Despite the fact that she never regained consciousness and I never got to talk to her again throughout the time she stayed in the hospital, I held on to my strong faith that she would get better. From time to time, I keep on telling myself that my mother died a premature death; she was only forty-seven and I had a false sense of comfort that she would be here a little longer.

Those who are close to me and know my story better do understand how hard my situation has been with her departure. My mom had me when she was barely seventeen and I have only had one side of the family. We grew up more like sisters than mother-daughter. In addition to that, my mum's family does not have strong ties and If you ask me, I would say she was the one and only strong support system I could count on anytime. I am not saying our relationship was perfect, actually, It was something we developed over time and it was beautiful. A lot of my friends even those who had never met her got to know her and were looking forward to meeting her because of what I posted about her.

As earlier stated, my mum had me when she was a secondary student, so I spent most of the early years of my life with my grandparents. After moving in with my mother (as an adolescent) my mum and I had a tough time getting along as we did not have much of the bonding that we needed. I was honestly that child that was really hard to receive love as I had grown up with rejection trauma (much more information in a later post on this). So aunt Eliza and I became friends in the later years of life and we were inseparable. She became a greater part of my life and was literary my go-to woman. She understood most of the struggles I would go through and she was there in everything. Aunt Eliza and I talked almost every day and she would just show up whenever I needed her. My recent memory of her was when my daughter was sick and I had to go to the hospital in the evening. My husband was out of the country and I had to go alone with the child. I just sent her a message informing her about it and immediately she called asking for further details. As soon as I got to the hospital, I just saw her approaching where we sat. She followed me and she stayed with me till I was assisted and that was almost midnight. On our way back, she made sure I was safely home and the guard had locked the gate and that's when she returned to her house. So that was the kind of friendship that we had. Having her meant I had a home aside from my matrimonial home. I could visit any other time. Whenever I had to travel outside the city for some time, my daughter had a caring home too and I would be at peace. Aunt Eliza could just call me for no reason; iih mwayamba matama mpakana masiku osawayankhulako anzanu, Please bring my daughter or " am coming to pick Mara because I miss her." She was even my daughter's best friend and they made me jealous. So losing this woman meant that I lost a home too. A place that I could just walk into now feels strange and hard to stay at. Everything changed in a blink of an eye and my mind is still finding it hard to adapt to the changes.

I have recently had so many moments where I am left helpless and all I can think of is "this wouldn't have been a problem if my mother was around. I must be grateful, I have had people who have supported me and offered a shoulder to cry on but I must also say I have had people who would tell me to my face that I was supposed to be fine and I should be grateful my mum left me at this stage in life. A certain friend actually told me that her mother was surprised that I seemed broken by my mother's death yet am married and have a family. To be honest I was hurt and shocked at the same time. That is just one of the sad things about the grieving journey. Very few people really understand the pain that comes with the loss of a loved one. Not just a loved one, but as close as a mother who was your friend and reliable support.

My grieving journey has been one described as complicated. I almost went into depression. The week my mother died and several weeks after I did not cry as much. I was still in shock and numbed the pain. So, after a few weeks and when I thought that was the time I would resume most of the tasks, grief hit the hardest. Honestly, I have never been in emotional pain like I have been in the past weeks (especially end of September and early October); I dreamt about her being alive and would just wake up to a reality that she was no more and my mind would just be confused, sometimes in such moments I would just lie there and start thinking about a lot of things at the same time. It was like I had lost control of my mind and thoughts were just running through me at a very fast pace. That meant I would stay up and fail to sleep again. Most of those days I would get out of bed in the morning with severe headaches. On other days I would fail to even sleep and I would keep on crying throughout the night.

I have learned a lot through my grief journey but my major lessons are; to lower one's expectations and stop expecting people to be there for you always. In fact, most disappointments come from the people who you thought would be there for you the most. To stop giving yourself a deadline is the most serious mistake one can make in this journey. So give yourself grace instead. People will make you feel like you are being dramatic and attention seeking but you are the only one that understands your pain better. Lastly, people experience grief differently and age is never a factor. Two people can lose a parent but they will be affected differently based on several factors. So a grieving journey can be a lone journey and at times it can leave you feeling all sorts of emotions that even "you" cannot understand . If not careful you can lose your mind completely. I almost did...

How did I survive? I cannot even tell. I thank God for bringing people into my life who tirelessly checked on me. I never saw myself pulling through this but I have seen the hand of God upon my life. God set my path way before I was created, he brought people and has continued making ways to lead me to places that have given me the comfort I never thought I needed. I haven't cried as much lately and I keep on asking myself how? For once I ever thought God abandoned and betrayed me for not answering my prayers when I called on him to heal my mum. I stopped listening to gospel music or going through my devotions because most of those things didn't make sense. Since my mother's death, I have only been to church once and when I went, I felt good at some point but later on, when I went home I felt like those people only talk about a God that does good things to his people and that's not what he did in my desperate situation. When I look back at the events that happened months before my mother's death and some that have happened after, there are so many things that I am able to look at and say, God had been preparing me for the moment and he has remained with me to provide the comfort and bring me to a state of restoration. That does not lessen the pain of course. I am still on my journey to healing but long story short "I survived and I am stronger than I thought...