My Mother, My Angel

Published 26 July 2018

A decade ago we were challenged to write a poem entitled "My Mother, My Angel" at Mookami Junior Secondary School where I was a student. I wrote some poem that I never gave to my mother, even though I had the opportunity. Even though she did not complete her education because her parents took her out of school at standard 7 (grade 7) so she can help them at the farm, my mother could read and comprehend very well. Of course now I wish I had given her that poem to express to her everything she means to me. I will not make an attempt to reproduce that poem, nor correct my mistakes at the time. Instead I will express my gratitude to the universe for giving me a mother like her. Thanks to some form of dementia, I am unable to get through to her and share this with her.

When Sis Mos started complaining that she could feel her brain shaking inside her skull about 8 years ago, being the arrogant smart kid I perceived myself to be, I not only ignored her but told her that what she was describing was impossible. Scans would reveal later that indeed her brain has shrunk. I could not have changed much about her situation, but at least I could have encouraged her to seek out medical attention sooner had I taken her comments seriously. In as much as Sis Mos would take me to hospital whenever I would complain of some persistent pain anywhere in my body, she did not maintain the same standards when it came to herself. So she needed that encouragement. In all the ways, she always put us before herself. I am even ashamed to think back to my childhood, for all the ways I was ungrateful for all the sacrifices she made. 

It is funny all the parents in my village thought I was a model child and would encourage their children to be like me. Little did they know that when my mother would ask me to go with her to collect the monthly food basket my family received because we were destitute, I would find all the ways not to go with her. All this because I was ashamed of my family's poverty. I remember, there were times I would wish my oldest sister was my mother instead so I did not have to have such an old mother when most of my friends had relatively young mothers. I cannot begin to imagine all the emotional pain this might have added to my mother. My heart bleeds when I recall how sadly she would say, "Ka tlhagolela leokana la re le gola la ntlhaba". The proverb loosely translates to, "I cared for the cactus only for its thorns to prick me". It is such pain that contributed to her illness at such a young age. Yet in all of that she never stopped putting us first and loving us selflessly. 

It may appear ironic that my family was poor and my mother spoilt me. For all the years that I have lived with my mother, except on the rare occasions when she was ill or away from home, I have never known where the hot water I bathed with each morning came from. To a different audience, they may imagine bath tubs and geysers, but not in my village. We had to heat up water outside with firewood. Firewood was a scarce resource, especially since I did not always accompany my mother to the sketchy outskirts of the village where one had a better chance of getting firewood. So instead she had to be innovative, at times burning plastic waste from the nearby shops just so I can have hot water to take a bath and go to school. She always told my little brother and I that she is doing this for us to have a better life than she did. She believed education was the best inheritance she could leave us. This she did until her condition worsened and she could no longer get up each morning. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I would not ask the universe for any other mother but Sis Mos. As I told my housemate recently after she was impressed with how neat I am, my mother raised me well. She raised me to be independent, driven, organized, tidy, compassionate (even though I did not always express it to her), thoughtful, and a lot other things English cannot capture. The thing I have missed the most as she has slowly faded away from her frail body is all the conversations we used to have. I am surprised we had the discussions that we had given my culture and the generation gap between her and I. I think it helps that I was nearly the last born of many children. Of course we almost never agreed on any of the big topics, such as marriage, but it was from these discussions that I learned to respect opinions that differed from my own. I learned to see through another person's eyes and where necessary modify my views.

I wish I had the opportunity to show her how much she means to me. I am where I am today because of all the sacrifices that she has made, and it is unfair that she is not able to enjoy the fruits of her labor. It is not enough to help care for her in her sickness, she should be living life as the queen she is. I pray that the universe conspire to give her many more years because my hope that she has any much longer to live is waning fast. Although I cannot promise her I will not marry a foreigner as she wished, it is tragic that she will never meet my wife and possible kids. Anyway, there is not much I can do about the future, or the past, in this moment I just want to express gratitude to all the powers of the universe for blessing me so abundantly with the life of Sis Mos. She is one in the universe, even now as she prepares for her journey to Ga Mokongwana where she will hopefully reunite with her husband, our father, after nearly 20 years.