The Family Matriarch

Let her sleep deep,

Let us not weep,

For she is at her journey’s end,

Left with no memories to mend.

No one knows life's fate.

She stared at us,

with her tearful eyes,

She tried to smile, but her pain

Was excruciating and her feet were swollen.

Grandma attempted to whisper something,

But she lacked her voice.

She gestured for a pen and some paper.

After a while and with great difficulty,

She wrote something down,

And grinned like a fairy.

The note said, don't cry over me,

It was my life to live,

Now, I go back to the Giver.

I held her in my arms and wept,

She wiped away my tears.

I reflected on the sweet memories we had shared.

She was a mother, I grew up with,

She took me to my first pre-school,

Returned every midday to fetch me home.

There are always boiled maize cobs,

sweet potatoes and fresh-pressed banana juice.

She was full of wisdom and had a good heart.

We lived in a small fishing community on Lake Victoria.

As I grew up, she taught me how to

smoke fish and make some potent local gin.

To this day, smoked fish and groundnuts remain

my favourite source, cooked with matooke and veggies.

She taught me how to be self-reliant, and how to work hard.

Now, I stared at her solemnly in her hospital bed

and I wondered where the time had flown. 

Grandma lifted her greyed head in pain and

gestured to her grandchildren to come closer.

She embraced them and then pulled Kate's ear playfully.

Kate was my eldest daughter, and

she shared a name with her grandma.

Then, my grandma took out an old brown

envelope and turned it over to me.

Her thin, bony hand pounded the envelope.

An elderly nurse stepped forward and whispered to me.

She told me not to open the envelope until my

grandma had departed from the surly bonds of earth.

I put the envelope in my laptop bag and

squeezed her hand and acknowledged my understanding.

Grandma smiled again, but I saw her tears run down her sunken face.

She must have understood that the moment

had come to make peace with her Creator.