17095

The last time my grandmother prayed for me was on October 15th, 2019. I know it was the last time she prayed for me because that was the day she took her last breath. It was news I expected; she had been sick for a better part of the year, but it still shook me.

You never forget where you were when you receive the news about the death of your grandmother. You never forget how long the call was. You will forget the exact words they used, though. You will forget them because, as the caller, your mother, talks, your brain will be thinking about the time she asked you to put matutas on her head when you were a teenager, and how one of the last conversations you had with her was about your uncombed hair.

In any case, my memory has generally been terrible. Sometimes I forget the title of a movie before the credits start to roll. I forget to call people. I forget their birthdays, their anniversaries, and some details about their lives they share with me. I forget things I read. Someone said forgetting things this easily could be a sign of something serious. I don’t remember what that was.

I don’t remember how I got into nursery school. It was a funny nursery school. It was funny because people like us, who weren't supposed to be in school, found ourselves taking exams that would decide whether we moved on to the next stage. There were three stages: from Mayai, the lowest class, you graduate to Kuku, then Jogoo, from where you can be recommended to go to class one. Without working our brains too much, we can tell where the person in charge of naming the classes was from.

This nursery school was in the middle of Makongeni Estate, where, if you threw eyes to one side, in the evening (or morning), you might see a train pass. On the other side of the railway line was Industrial Area.

I hadn’t officially enrolled in that nursery school. That’s why I wasn’t supposed to be in that Mayai class when they held exams to decide who would go to the Kuku class. I was tiny and couldn’t hold my ear over my head. I was at school because there was no one to babysit me at home. My grandmother, who was a teacher there, took me with her to keep a close eye on me. The alternative would have been for them to lock me in the house, in a basin of water, with the TV on. Wait, I don’t remember whether we had a TV then. If they did that, I definitely would have grown up needing therapy.

I may still need therapy, but it's for other things.

I remember our house number in that Estate. It was door VI (don’t read this in Roman numerals, please) 16, door number 1. It was on a corner, on the ground floor. The sitting room window opened to a large field where we played whatever games five-year-old kids played. My grandmother stood at this window and called out my name whenever it was time for me to go back and have a bath. I always hated that.

I haven’t gone there in a blue moon, but every time I walked in that estate, nostalgia would attack and wrestle me to the ground.

I don’t remember the kids we played with because I left before my memory developed enough muscles to remember names and faces. But if you show me the house a particular kid lived in, I just might, only if I squint really hard, tell you whether they were good at football or hide-and-seek.

Years later, things got so fuzzy that I don’t bother to squint to remember things.

I remember the number 17095, though. Very clearly. The speakers at Texas Cancer Centre would come to life, and a lady with a raspy voice would call out a number.

‘Ticket number 14376, proceed to Radiotherapy.’

Then it would be silent for a couple of minutes. People pass by, a cleaner cleans, someone in a wheelchair is wheeled away, and another one enters the bathroom behind you.

‘Ticket number 15097, proceed to Radiotherapy.’

The voice was consistent, always. You’d think it was recorded. She would read the numbers one by one, slowly, so that everyone had a chance to hear their number called. Then she would read it again. Activity in the corridors continued. Those sitting there, waiting, stared into their phones, avoiding eye contact with anyone else. If you’re keen enough, you might see the exhaustion hidden in the wrinkles on their faces. You might see despair and the invisible burdens they carried.

Ticket number 37486, proceed to Radiotherapy.’

I sat there mapping out my route back home, one with minimal traffic. I thought about it hard, as if I had lots of alternatives. It’ll still be the same route I have used countless times before: turn left from the Hospital, pour myself onto Mbagathi Road, then navigate to Mombasa Road via the Southern bypass.

‘Ticket number 17095, proceed to Radiotherapy.’

The call interrupts my thoughts. Thoughts about the route back home and some unpleasant ones. Thoughts you cannot say out loud, and you would want to slap yourself if they lingered too long in your brain. I remember one time looking at her and thinking, what if this is it?

“Is that us?” She asks. She didn’t know the number. She asked that question every time the voice called out a number.

“Yes,” I respond, trying to help her get out of her seat, but she manages just fine without my help.

After about fifteen minutes, she comes back, complaining about the soft incline from the Radiotherapy room. She sits down to catch her breath.

She asks me how many sessions are remaining. We had been counting down since she started. 13 more, I tell her. The cancer had taken a toll on her and wiped the joy from her face. After rounds of Chemotherapy, and now, Radiotherapy, the exhaustion on her 74-year-old body was evident. She complained about the treatment constantly. Her body wasn’t hers. A less vibrant and energetic person had invaded and taken over. Someone less hopeful, less chatty.

Sometimes, she said nothing on the drive back. Other times, she asked how I knew all the roads in Nairobi. After she retired and moved to the village, she had barely set foot in the city. The traffic and the noise stressed her.

“I just want to go and lie down.”

We danced around hope. It wasn’t an exciting dance. One day she’d be fine, and the next she would spend the day vomiting, yet she hadn’t eaten anything. Another day, she'd have a smile on her face, and the next day she'd be in an ambulance being rushed to the hospital because her breathing isn’t consistent. Of all the things in your life that can be inconsistent, you don’t want breathing to be among them.

She did fight until the very last minute.

I got the call at 4 AM and felt like Yokozuna had sat on my chest. I was breathing hard. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was shaking. I screamed into my pillow. I paced around, stared at the ceiling, trying to think about how people mourn. Is this a skill that needs to be taught somewhere?

I listened to Rozzi and the Band Joseph. I don’t think the music helped. The distractions weren't distracting enough, and the comedy wasn’t funny. I went to my barber and told him to shave it all. It was part of my mourning, a salute to her - one last hug, if you will.

One time, I accidentally saw her adjusting her headwrap. It was when she was still doing Chemo. She was bald. I remembered how, when I was a teen, she would ask me to retouch her matutas so she could sleep properly. I don’t know the relationship between matutas and proper sleep. Maybe they hold your dreams together - dreams she had for herself, and for me. Those dreams went with her.

I will remember the way she asked for tea after supper.

She would jolt from her nap like she had a bad dream, or God whispered something in her ear, or she remembered something from her childhood she wanted to tell me.

“Did we finish the tea?” She asked, rubbing her eyes as if trying to cure a headache, a headache she might have because of napping before taking tea.

It was a trick question. She knew we had finished the tea because we were having tea as we prepared supper. We had even washed the kettles! That question might as well be translated to ‘make me a cup (Lol) of tea.’ But also, to be fair, there was an unwritten rule in that homestead that tea was never supposed to run out.

I will remember the prayers she made. Prayers for every occasion. There were prayers for when you arrived home, where she’d give thanks for journey mercies. There were prayers for when you were leaving, where she’d not forget to pray for the driver, and mention that vehicles were machines made by man and that God was the real driver.

If we have met and you think I am a kind and welcoming person, then you might not have met my grandmother. Or if you think I am funny, then you haven't encountered her. If you think I am laid back with seemingly nothing stressing me, you should know this is all her. Her life was open and full of possibilities. She spoke softly and looked you in the eyes when she did. She listened, even when she was unable to understand, and asked questions with childlike wonder. I took a lot of who I am from her, and I know I’m not exactly excelling at it.

I have been trying to mourn for the last seven years. Trying because I still don’t know how to do this. Mourning looks different in different seasons. It might start with crying, which I did, on a rainy weekday afternoon as I solo hiked Kilimambogo. It might be that sinking feeling that hits you when you think that no matter how much work you put in, she will not be there to see the fruits of that labour, and how that will convince you there is no reason to do anything. It might look like writing a book and dedicating it to her. It might look like not thinking about home as often, because home became different without her around. Regardless, that grief will never leave you alone. On a random Friday afternoon, you will remember the words 'Shosh is gone,' and a tear will roll down your cheek.

The cruelty of death cannot be drowned in tears here and there.

I can only hope I will continue to live my life as fully as she lived hers, with ease, with abundance, with a strange belief that we are here for others. In her last week, probably knowing she was about to die, because I hear you can know when you’re about to go, she was concerned about a future for me, a future that, up to now, I'm yet to imagine for myself. She taught me to dream, something that I rarely do anymore.

I will remember the times we shared. From the walks from nursery school while she was holding my hand to the drives in the car as she complained about nausea after a session of Radiotherapy, from the random calls asking why I no longer call, even when we had talked not too long ago, to the once-in-a-while pancakes she made. She raised me with a gentle iron fist. In a typical African home where affection wasn’t shown by touch, she was the only one who hugged me whenever we saw each other. Now, I feel like those hugs were way fewer than they should have been.

I have seen and experienced the world leaning toward the hurting. How strange, then, that we try so much to hide our hurts?