Why I Am So Obsessed With
Even Half-Year Birthdays.
Today, the
13th of December, I turn 54 and half years, as I was born on 13th
June 1958, which I think was on a Friday the 13th. Anywhere, I do
not believe in superstition, and that includes witchcraft.
You may I
ask me why I should be so conscious of the half year in my life. Well, I must
confess that the day I saw my father lying peacefully in his coffin, having
succumbed to the cancer of the colon on February 29 1988, at the tender age of
67 – for he was still very strong and enjoying his beers and indulging his
hobby of cycling – I told myself that I must outlive him. Hence my obsession
with adding even a half year to my life.
The other
reason why I am so obsessed with half year birthdays is that my mother,
uMaHlabangani, is still alive and kicking, looking like a teen virgin though
she is now an octogenarian (in her eighties). If you could call her number and
she answers the phone, you would think you are talking to a schoolgirl, for her
voice is strong and smooth. This is despite the fact that she has borne the
burdens and pains of this world which would make most mothers wish “they had
never given birth and their breasts never given suck”, as our Lord Jesus Christ
once hinted.
Of course
she has lost five adult children within a period of ten years. And seeing her
weep every time her child’s coffin was lowered into the grave has always been
the saddest and most painful moments of life. And during such times I have
always prayed that I should not die before she dies as I would not want her to weep
like that over my dead body. With each death of my sibling, I have come to
believe that children must bury their parents and not vice versa. The pain of
seeing a parent burying his or her child is hard to bear. And some of them
never really get over the pain as they die in mourning.
I remember
my friend Dingaan Dlomo who died in 1998. His mother died a few months later.
In 2007
during my one-year teaching sojourn in Dundonald, Mpumalanga, I witnessed the
anguish of a mother whose only son, aged 21, had succumbed to AIDS. Everyday
she would walk to the cemetery to sit by her son’s grave. Realising that she
was actually running out of her mind, I decided to talk to her. She told me she
could not believe that her only son was gone forever. And she started crying. I
told her what was happening in the world concerning AIDS. I told her every
family had been affected by the scourge and that I had actually lost five
siblings.
Tears
running down her face, she looked at me and uttered, “But isn’t God punishing
us parents and not the dead children; for it’s us the parents who feel and
remain with the pain”.
For a moment
I thought of my mother, and silently prayed, “Lord let me bury my mother!”.
