A New Story....

‘Elton’s mum has passed on,’ that was the message.

I received that few moments after being told about it verbally. The feeling was intense. I felt the world had gone wild, finally, for Elton. I had received a message earlier regarding his mother’s sickness and all of a sudden, her journey was done.

I remembered the first time I met her. She was an amazing lady. Elton had called me to go see him at his father’s place. That time, he had met Mary, his future wife and she too was there. I loved seeing the two of them. I had not yet met someone in my life and seeing these two with a budding relationship always showed me there was life to live for.

His mum was an amazing lady. When introduced to me, she was glad to see me. Elton said I was a friend. We had been friends after high school, having had a stormy relationship when we were at college. We had a great evening and all I remember was the simple ‘Thanks for passing by’ that made me see a great lady.

Now, she had gone. She had said her last regards to the world. The wind had finally blown its final part on her living body. She had finally gone home to rest, never to be seen again, never to be heard of in real life, and never to be heard speaking. It was the end of the road for her and we were saddened by it.

‘Elton’s mum has passed on’, the message was now even more clear. I read it and thought loud to myself. I reminisced about the good old days of childhood. I thought of the times when life was a great experience with mums and dads. It was time once more to ask those dreaded questions.

I pick up my phone and call Wilson ‘Hello mate, I had already heard of Elton’s mum’

‘Yeah, it is a sad affair’ the voice the other side replies.

‘Sometimes there are things so hard to think about. It is one of those moments I never want to talk about,’ I reply.

‘Well, she is gone,’ the voice replies, ‘we are still trying to make the arrangements for her burial.’

‘Let me know when that is done. I will get back to you later.’

I hang up after this. It was a sad event and I was not about to get myself into it.

I have always been shocked at how people’s mothers’ deaths have always affected me. I still remember a week after a close family friend lost her mother. I just could not hold back the tears. I still remember the time when wreaths were brought to the coffin. That was like taking the person from the real world. I cried, like a baby. I saw a life gone forever and here we were waiting. I remember the joke a friend of mine always made about such incidents. One time we were talking of marriage and he said:

‘My people are always screaming at me to marry. Each time at a wedding they tell me I am the next in the marriage line.’

I laughed at him. I always wondered why people saw marriage as the end of every man’s life. I asked him how he dealt with the issue.

‘At each funeral, as the corpse is being laid into the grave, I tell them “You are the next” and they stopped bothering me about marriage.’ We laughed over that and never had that conversation again. I cannot quite remember when he said it, but I think it was at a funeral.

The sight of corpses fills my mind with memories, some rich, some sad, some pathetic. I had never seen anyone die and so it seemed like that is all I would see about life. When mum and dad died, I only saw the corpses. I was never there to witness it. When Elton’s mum died, my mind ran through a marathon of events, possible and impossible. I saw a mother that had cared for her children, a mother that had fought a good fight for them. I saw a woman ready to defend her children from the madness that surrounded them. Elton loved his mother for sure and that always made me think of a mother that carried her children with tenderness and care. It was a wild guess. I was sure she had been her best.

The feelings get intense. I see the past, I see the present, I see the future. I try to collapse them into one incident and they are so stubborn, they stick to what they are. I remember Ebenezer Scrooge and how he had been told about the past in order to change his indifference. Why is life so hard sometimes to fathom, I think. I see rich and pathetic lives in my vision and all I see is a darkness of the future and a blurred past that has been cleared without effort.

The news of Elton’s mother brings lots of mixed feelings. There is a lot that has not been resolved in my own life. I think of the times past and the times to come. I go to his mother’s grave and there is a lived experience that comes back to life.

Sometimes, I have always wondered why it is hard to let go of so much, now, it is too late. It is back and with a gusto that I have no choice over. I have to give in to it. I have to let it be. I have to relive an experience thought to be dead.

It happened 13 years ago.