When You Still Have the Time…

There is something terribly electrifying about death. It is a feature so to speak that slaps you smack back into reality. If you live in a bubble, like me, it’s one of the two needles that prick it open, the other needle is love. You realize that sadly, everything and everyone must come to an end. It is the most adamant consultant in the world, like taxes, always lurking around to remind of what you already know, but you wish you didn’t.
One of my friends just lost her dad to a terrible disease, which had been consuming him for sometime. When I received the news, I was in shock, for sometime. I was mopping the house but I just stopped and sat down on the very floor I was supposed to be cleaning, see, hot men are not the only reason a woman’s knees go weak. I did not cry I just sat and stared into the clear nothing. I had one of those moments where I did not know how to feel and how to react. If you were close, you could probably have heard the gears shifting in my head, and for a good fifty minutes, they simply turned. And I thought of a lot of things that would eventually happen and a whole lot of others that would not.
 She just had her first child, a beautiful sweet little girl, an astonishing fifteen kilos of innocence and cuteness. Of how the girl wont have a maternal granddad. And how the family gatherings will have an empty seat that no one can fill. Of how she will not get guka’s blessing, and those prayers that have you feeling the old man is in direct contact with the divine. Of how she won’t be sitting on his lap during the short holidays and have babu tell her the tale of why the hyena limps. And all those unspoken conversations that will forever remain just that, unspoken. Of how she won’t get one of babu’s pet names and above all how she will never get the love that babu brings. And how fate just denied her the chance to sing Jesus loves me this I know and twinkle twinkle little star to him. I know the look she will be having, because I see it all the time in my ten year old cousins every time we talk about our grandmother, who passed on when they were just about a year old.
When I finally got up, I just did what I do best when am feeling emotional and confused, cancelling all my plans,  I turned off my phone, took a pencil and paper and poured my heart. Tears then flowed, silently, like they should. Thank goodness am not the wailing type. Anyway, as I was saying, I haven’t been the best with my pal, which is a poor  character I possess with many of my relationships, but I was hoping the uniting factor would be something less grim, like a girl’s night out, or her baby’s first words or bumping into her on the streets or something not death related.
 I am not righteous myself, in fact am probably the worst of them, considering I have not seen my grandparents in a year, and am thinking I should not let this time grow older, so am dropping by the coming week. And am also thinking am not the only one. Our intentions of going to ocha being akin to Harambee Stars dreaming of winning the world cup. We only go because it is absolutely necessary and because you have called them saying you are sick so many times, the next time your excuse will probably be because you’re dead.
God gave us a gift, (like He is always doing); it is in front of us every day. Am not talking about the damn smart phone you are holding right now, or the amount of retweets and comments you just got on social media. No, it is those ageing sweethearts you left in gicagi, the ones you dumped in a nursing home and probably the one you have not seen for half of your life. Please don’t try to justify yourself using those Mpesa messages that confirm you send them money once in a while. Their prayers keep you moving and in some way, they are the reason you keep achieving something in your life.
It wouldn’t hurt to just cancel one of your rave weekends or clear some of your busy schedules and spend some time with some of the people you owe your existence to, biologically speaking.  So that even in death, you will find solace in knowing that you played your part, and even in the afterlife, they will continue look down and be happy they were part of our lives. And that we will learn to let go once the time comes.
My dear, I hope you find consolation in the wise book, 1 Corinthians 15: 20 “but the truth is that Christ has been raised from death, as a guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised”.
   Now, about that house I was moping…  
                                                                                                                                 @pierrajecy 

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