The sound of a teardrop

Midnight seeps through a crack and morphs into dawn. Flowers will drink the morning dew and wither in this lopsided pattern of faded blues. 

Seasons are fleeting from weddings and wakes to wedding veils turned into funeral shrouds. Ebbing heavenwards. Where is hope?

I am trying to tell a tale that shifts like a gale. I am more afraid of living than I am of dying. Blood to the earth. Tears, black and graveyards. Song to the skies. Dew, moon, and sunlight. The night bedecked with stars lays in his slumber in broken silence. Perhaps the dead have a place of their own where they are locked up and tamed. Perhaps they dance and sing in their own haze. For  what is death but  black and blue with red and  plenty of empty greys

In this atmosphere of annihilation, I am an artist with a heavy heart stuck with an empty canvas. I want to paint my paternal grandmother’s soul and my maternal grandfather’s laughter. I want to paint his resilience and the white clutches that replaced his left leg. The phantom leg that he still could feel even after amputation. 

The amputation that had him spend most of his days, sat under a mango tree.

I want to paint a monochrome of his intrepidity and how even in pain, he showed up for each rising sun. He loved his radio. He died on Tuesday 16-06-2020, a few hours to midnight.

 above maternal  grandpa's grave




I like to think of my grandmother as the master of storytelling, a generational mother, and a golden age. She came from a distant land where the hills touch the sky with a river where the sun takes its bath every evening. Wadhare.

She mothered more children than her hands could hold. She saw generations come and go and even at 107 years, she still remembered the people she was baptized with in 1957 most of them now deceased. I want to paint her heart and its light. I want to make tonal variations of her love and brush it over with her patience. I want to add all the colors of her smile.

My favorite story of her is a torch story, a story of her youth. In her days girls were married off early. When she met Grandpa, Mzee Naphtali was one of the earliest teachers. Once in his endeavors, a white man gave him a torch silver and bright. One night while he was out with grandma he gave her the torch to use on her way home as he went elsewhere to meet an ancient friend. Grandma marveled at the torch, never having seen such a wonder before and when she got home she had no idea of how to switch it off. She blew at it like you would blow off a candle, she hid it under the bed, but it still won't go off and after trying all she could to put it off, she gave up and slept. Grandpa would later come and show her how to switch it off.

 

I was named after her. She was Phillida, I am Philly, a short form of her name. A week before her demise, I rushed to see her, at this stage her memory had faded and she didn't recognize most people, not her own children nor her grandchildren. I held her hand and told her she would be fine and that her current illness would pass too. She looked at me and said she was weary of this earth and for a moment I was silent. What did I know about patience in my 20th year that she didn't know in her 107th?

 What did I know about resilience when I didn't lose my husband at a young age and my sons and twins twice?

So instead, I fumbled with words on how even though she didn't recognize me, I was certain she would get better soon. She sat up and took my hand in hers, looked at me, and said. 

"Nyakwara, ang'eyi,an e ma nachaki."

"Grandchild, I know you, I'm the one that named you".

She was saying goodbye. 

 She died at dawn on 31^st August. 5:30 AM in the morning. She gave the world her last sigh and for the whole day it rained,  nature weeping for its very own.

above grandma and grandpa's graves (paternal)

I want to paint my grandfather’s soul and my grandmother’s laughter but my grandpa’s soul is too big for this canvas and my grandma’s laughter will need more space. So I choose, to paint death instead.

 Glory to music. Femur of glory to nature and its lush green verdant leas. Glory to the broken hearts that time couldn’t heal, glory to vanity………… for all is vanity

 I’m an artist with a heavy heart and an empty canvas. I am disallowed, the recidivism of grief. I want to dance. I want to cry. I have seen death before, we’ve met more than once and I know his stance and the ugly in his walk. I pick the first color; red, the color of pain.

I’m painting death as a dark cloud, a dash of blood on a tear-glazed background. An indefinite brush of black and white, a transition from the living into the abode of the shades. The silent world which harbors all the dreamers of yesterday from poets and singers, storytellers and dancers, nurses of babies, and mothers who never held their own babies for their souls slipped into the empty greys during birth. Babies that died before and after birth are little cherubs clothed in grace and light. They knew no fault. Their paths were spotless.

 For death is black and white. For death is grey and blue.

Ash begets ash and time swallows all the whys. Death is here to remind us of our fragility and to let us feel our own souls and humanity. That as a bird ruffles its feathers to flight, and its lithe feather falls and gently stills on earth’s richest green to be whisked away by the winds and is soon forgotten, so is the human soul with its limited seasons under the sun.

Grandpa, you lay six feet under soil fifty meters away from the mango tree that held you in its bosom and cloaked you with its shade. The tree that fed you its fruit and nursed your thoughts.

Grandma all that is left of you is an empty house that reeks of loneliness for you lost grandpa in your youth. An empty house with a rusty roof and two graves

From dust we came, to dust shall we return.

There is a heaven that is open to all.Let's meet there when the sun sets. Fare thee well grandma. Fare thee well Grandpa

Lyanah.