a string snapped

“Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.” –Terri Guillemets

Sometimes you are holding on to a very thin string. And sometimes, it snaps! 30^th December 2022.

The end of the year is usually exceptional for me. Apart from the festive season and a break from the usual routine, this also represents a time to look back, exhale and expect a new year. Christmas 2022 was, therefore, memorable. It was the first Christmas without my nephew Vincent, who passed away in January 2022. I silently hoped we could maneuver this gap and be okay. It was the second Christmas without our dad. Somehow, I thought, “We have done this once before, so we can do it.”

Indeed, it was a wonderful Christmas. Mum, who had been sickly, looked optimistic despite failing health, at least to my eyes. For the first time, I entertained hopes for some miracle and healing. We had a good time with my siblings and their families. Many extended past the time they had planned to spend in the village. I felt like I could start breathing, reclaim my life. After close to two years of dealing with the most challenging period in my family, my dad’s illness and demise, and my nephew’s sudden demise, I was looking forward to “close the year’ and starting afresh. I remember telling some colleagues during the Staff Christmas party how this end of the year was special because I felt I was beginning to breathe.

I had planned my time to take a holiday in the new year, so I was back to work immediately after Christmas break. My last day of work was 30th December, but I completed most of my work and scheduled handover emails and notes on the 29th. Call it a premonition. Early Friday morning, 30th December, I received the devastating news. I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, who stayed home after Christmas.

She told me, “Mum is gone.”

I sought clarity. Which mum?

She must be talking about a different mum because the mum I had just received a video of the previous evening was okay. It could not be. I told myself. I was trying to understand what she meant.

“Sophie, mum passed away,” she repeated.

“What do you mean? Which mum? I don’t understand you?”

“Our mum. Here at home. Mum is gone.” 

Her words made little sense. She had sent a text message early in the morning telling us to pray for Mum. Somehow, this didn’t click, and I decided she had mistakenly sent the text. Possibly an old message that was in the draft?

I had decided not to ask for clarification too early and wanted to wait for dawn. I woke up, dressed for my morning walk, and started the car, sure that it was a wrong message and I would alert her to the same I was driving out. The phone call was not making sense.

“Home where,”

I persisted. She repeated. I was now confused. Maybe she meant that our mum had passed away?

“Mummy Wambui?” I asked. As if I have several mothers.

“Yes,” she said.

I felt like a string that had weakly but persistently been holding me in somewhere deep had snapped. My mum suddenly got worse around 5.00 am and passed on shortly after. When you have had some experience, like the death of a loved one, you know how it feels and how it would be painful. I imagined that I knew how it would feel. I was wrong. I did not know.

I recalled a blog by Bikozulu where he said, “Your mother will break your heart. “

I thought I understood this. Then, it happened to me. Mum was gone, and I did not know that kind of pain existed.

While Mum had been ailing for a while, still, there was something that felt so sudden about her death. I wanted to be ready and prepared when it happened. It was not yet time, I felt. I had imagined a few more years with her, at least. I had imagined there would be an alert, a sign. Some preparations where I would know we had little time left. Something that would alert me that it was time for her to go. Not the sudden news early in the morning.

I didn’t feel like any arsenals I had in my store were sufficient. There was a new world I was trying to navigate, a world without my mother. That was a different universe. When Dad died, I put all my eggs in one basket so that I still have one parent. I lost both my parents 13 months apart. It felt like the fabric holding our family together had broken. All the screws were gone. Is there a family when there are parents? Is there a home without parents? I wondered.

There are several things that I understood at the theoretical and brain level, but at the innermost core, I could not connect. This is one of them. I know families without parents and that parents would not live forever in the best-case scenario. Yes, I knew that in my head, but my heart and soul struggled to understand this.

I wanted to accept that my mum had done her diligent work on Earth. I tried accepting that illness had denied Mum her true self. She had not been herself for the previous three years, but I felt I needed her around just a little more.

What to do when it feels like the umbilical cord is getting forcefully cut off for the second time? What could I do when I felt like a string holding me together had snapped?

There were no easy answers. But the sun kept rising and setting.

Losing a mother is the deepest pain that a heart can experience. About 7 months later, I can now write about this.