mom

Mother, wife, teacher, friend, mom is gone.

It has been several months and still I have no words to describe the gaping black hole in my life that has been created by her absence.

No words but there are questions. So many questions. Who will answer the questions I never got to ask her;
When you were my age, did you feel this lost?
This silenced?
At gatherings did the men talk over your head while a thousand unspoken comebacks raced through it?

The questions I have yet to even think of. Who is going to teach me how to mother my own babies?

What do I do mama now that my foundation has been ripped from beneath me? Where do I find the confidence to build a life?

I was looking through pictures, of her around my age, an undergrad at Makerere posing in fashionable seventies outfits. She had a reserve that I identify with, like - I’m here and I look fabulous and I know it, too and, no, you cannot touch. You better have something more interesting to say next time, mate.

Dad, my aunties and others who knew her then talk about her fierce debating skills and knowing my mom and myself and the way I grew up that makes so much sense. Is there a particular way your family communicates? In our household the way we communicated was through debate and (good natured) argument.

I wish that I had known her then. We would have loved each other in spite of the fact that I thought her a little conservative about some things while she thought me too wild.

I wish I could have gotten to know her through her stories about herself then. I wish I could have hear how she navigated life choices about career and family, relationships, Africa and the West, oppression, freedom and femininity. I wish I could hear advice as I tried to do the same.

We would have had such good conversations, over endless cups of chai, over the remnants of lazy Sunday breakfasts. I would confess and she would laugh at me and gently nudge my thoughts in the right direction. Then she would start laughing again, her whole face squishing up. In the face of this sincere and contagious outburst I would have trouble maintaining my indignance. Making mom laugh was a pleasure that did not occur often enough.

I feel so robbed of those conversations.