She left

I was there at the very end, I saw the very last processes of life, I felt the pulse fade, I saw the eye lids give, I heard the desperate gasps for air, I smelled hope leave, I was there at the end and all my senses were alive but I was so freaking numb, I was numb physically and it penetrated  right to the core of me, leaving me a cold shell, like her when she left...she left yesterday in a journey of close to five minutes and I stayed there to the very end and for the life of me I don't know why I stayed.

Maybe I stayed because of how she stayed and carried me on her back when I was around three or four, and then I got too old for her to carry me so she beat the hell out of the sling I brought to her to carry me in and told me if I ever brought the sling to her again she would beat me as much. I never touched that sling again....

Maybe I stayed because of how she treated four boils I had on my backside when I was seven and I wouldn't let the doc touch me, but she soothed me to submission as she squeezed away till u felt relief....

Maybe I stayed because of that time I refused to go to school back in grade one, and my mother couldn't deal with it, so she walked me to school, well raced me rather, with a stick to strike me with if she caught up with me, and how she threatened to throw me in jail if I ever refused to get an education!

Maybe I stayed for the numerous times she took me to visit family members, for how excited I got every time the school holidays came and the sleepless nights just before the day of travel, the foodstuffs she bought me along the way, the way she held my head in her lap if I fell asleep during the journey, how she fought off stranger who stepped on my little feet by mistake, how proud she made me to be chosen by her as a travel companion...

Maybe I stayed because of her cuisine, made with bare commodities but lots of love, sprinkled with affection that made me eat at her house almost every night despite how full I was after eating my mother's food; and the bananas she grew down the grove on the hillside, how she ripened them and roused me on the morning they were ready for consumption and let me choose the bunch that pleased me most, eating those sweet bananas with tea brewed by her by the fireside from her ever glowing hearth....

And maybe I stayed for her kindness when my mother left the homestead because of her differences with pa, how she walked so far to make sure we stayed as part of the family, how she made sure my brother got circumcised the traditional way and she even paid for it just to guard the pride and honour of the family, how she stayed part of us through adolescence and teenage, always treating my issues with a huge plate of African dishes and flavours...

Maybe I stayed for how she valued my education, how damn proud she was at the end of every term when I brought back my report form and I was number one every time, how she glowed and predicted a bright future for me, how she bought me a suitcase to pack my clothes in when I went to Uni, how she one day took a newspaper and read the word horizon as horison and proved to me she could read some...

Maybe I stayed for how spiritual she was, her belief in freedom that she fought for, the freedom that took a husband away from her and a father from her kids, that made her get seven years in detention, how she prayed for each person in the family by name, her belief in God and His oneness with us, the freedom of worship, she never questioned when I came home in a buibui and said I was now a Muslim, she only said that I could now make swahili dishes, since she didn't understand much about Islam....

But maybe what made me stay most was that I am a mother like she was, and her kids were there weeping and I could feel and understand their pain and loss, the grief of the end of an era, the gap left by an intrepid fighter and an anchor of hope and strength, shoes too big for any one person to fit, a legacy so staunch it makes my throat ache with something akin to tangible pain...

I stayed so that I might never forget, God forbid, because her blood flows through my veins, some of her characteristics are imprinted in my DNA, I draw my strength from her, she's part of my tapestry, she lives on even though she left.