In my culture,
we do not say goodbye.
That kind of faithless finality
belongs only to those
who have absconded the ways
of Gikuyu and Mumbi.
Instead,
we say Thaayũ.
To mean peace.
That if this be the last time I see you,
I wish you peace.
And I pray that it stays with you,
even as I leave.
Until we meet again.
Wherever that may be.
*****
It rained when we buried my Guka. Almost as though whatever pregnant cloud was overhead had timed its glorious delivery. Just as they lowered his coffin into the gaping hole of the shamba he so dearly tended to, there they came. The showers of blessings. The heavens had opened up as if to consecrate that very moment. Like a seed re-planted back into the earth, the waters poured generously on the freshly upturned soil. Just as he had cherished the land, so too did it honour him in return.
I think of this moment often when I visit his grave now. I think to myself, if he were a tree, what tree would he be? Something tall and sturdy and aged. The type that weathered the storms we saw on TV. These are the types of silly questions I’ve taken to asking him as I bond with the shadow of his remains.
I don’t visit Guka often, I will admit. The city has laid its claim on me, and I find myself weary to slough off its stifling grasp. It is here I am meant to grow; I tell myself. Amidst the suffocating industrial smoke that makes you forget the fact that trees produce oxygen. A fact that now seems like a tale we tell the children so they may dream of a better future rooted in the distant past. But when I visit him, here at his final resting place, I feel my lungs expand as I greedily take in gulps after needy gulps of fresh crisp air.
It feels good to remember what it is like to truly breathe. To simply breathe and have that breath be enough. I suppose this is why I come here. To show him that I remember and I long to remember. That I have not and will not soon forget, regardless of how many moons may come to pass between this meeting and the next. This is our ritual of remembrance. My Guka and I.
My visits begin the same way they always have. Alone. In absolute solitude. This is our shared communion and ours alone. I come as I am—heart open, arms wide in love as in their emptiness. A deep breath as both our bones settle. In…In…Out. And then…a hello. It is needless, I know. The dead can always feel our presence. I do it anyway because it is our way. And as the breath escapes my lips, I feel peace return to me in its place. The kind of peace that surely rests with the dead. The kind granted by the promise of eternal life fulfilled.
There are stories about my Guka. Stories rivalled only by those he himself told. I recall them as I ease myself gently to the ground, legs crisscrossed just as they were whenever he would tell me his tales. They say he felt it as death came to take him whilst he was still alive. That he felt it creep through his body, slowly making its way to his heart. That he bargained for more time and got it. My Guka, the expert bargainer.
I once witnessed his prowess at a chemist as he haggled the price of an anti-acid he so desperately needed, from a thousand, down to mere shillings. A concept I had never dared to think possible until that moment. He had done his best not to let his pain show through his brave front, but I could see it in the tremor of his fingers and in the way his jaw settled into a grit. The doctors had already tinkered with his heart at this point. Now there was a maker that made it pace. It contradicted doctrine in my mind but who was I to argue? If the doctors had found a way to bring God from heaven and into my grandfather’s heart just like the pastor before them had, then who was I to say it wasn’t so? After all, God did work in mysterious ways.
I think of the time he bargained for, now. How, without it, I probably would not be conducting this ritual today. We had grown closer that year than we had in my last twenty-some years prior. So close that he had taken to calling me friend. The weight of its honour had me staggered. I could not beam more with pride if I tried. Of course, his passing had in turn been a little harder to bear because of it. There I was—a sliver of a person in the crowd. Watching as a piece of my soul made its gentle way back to him. Carried over in the sand I poured onto the mound that now sheltered my friend. Gone. No longer a friend but an ancestor. I suppose there is comfort in that. Knowing his guiding hand will now forever be right beside me, all I need do is ask.
I ask him now if he will come for me when my time comes, like the angels did for him. This, I had heard from Cũcũ so I know it to be true. That when his borrowed time had finally run out, the angels carved their presence from the lingering shadows and made themselves known to him in his liminal space. His final moments spent in-between the two clamouring worlds of life and death. When she retells this story, she will say he saw them just as he saw her. That he had asked, “Who is that standing beside you?” Which, of course, is not the kind of question you ask your frantic wife as she struggles to shake you awake, desperately trying to pull you back to the realm of the living and corporeal. She will later say that she saw the exact moment when he knew those minutes were his last. When he turned his eyes to hers one last time and spoke words of peace over her.
I feel them whispered in the breeze now. Thaayũ. And I know he will be there when my time comes.
Our time is slowly coming to an end now. Our last minutes in this moment. As I say my goodbyes, I do so, not in words, but in thoughts. Here, in his transcended state, it is our spirits that commune. So, I think it, and my soul speaks it. Goodbye for now my friend. Thaayũ. Until we meet again.
=====
Image: Jon Tyson Unsplash cropped