Three days ago, as I write, my auntie died. It hurts to say it, but I must, because it is a fact. Learning to say those words is a journey that began four years ago, when my mum’s brother died. He lived in my mother’s motherland, so the news should have travelled by phone. But when his wife could not get through to Mum, she tried me.
And so it was that I held the news, a grenade that would burst my mother’s heart.
It was morning. I knew that Mum charged her phone overnight in the kitchen and would check her messages as the kettle boiled.
I took a cab to get there first, Googling in the car “how to tell someone about a death”. An article by a charity advised sticking to the facts: “It is clearer to say someone has died than use a euphemism.”
She beamed when I appeared: “What a lovely surprise! I was about to make tea.”
“Sit down,” I said, “I have bad news.” But when it came to telling her what had happened, I could not say the word. “Passed away,” is what came out.
Later, in the cab home, I asked to borrow the driver’s phone charger because my battery was dead, then cried into my palms.
The nerve of us, to use such a word! When a battery dies, it does not tear a hole in existence into which you sink, to live in the swampy mulch of grief.
But I’ve since learned that words are nothing to death. They cannot soften the blow or make it worse, because death cannot get any worse. It is the most concrete; certain to crush, certain to arrive.
My auntie died. That’s a fact. But there are others. She was a headmistress who never cowed to marriage pressures, living alone despite the whispers. She had a wicked tongue that struck fear into her pupils (and relatives). She was my mother’s only sister. She is gone, but she won’t be forgotten.
from Lifestyle | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3tuIUxf
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