adminBlessing Musariri Shelling the Nuts
Death used to be a fearsome thing. There was a procedure to it almost reverential. One did not discuss it too loudly or too freely. It was shocking. It was never taken as a given. There was always an undiscovered reason that needed to be unearthed; someone or something to be blamed (still somewhat the
case today).
With Christianity, we learn that death is the promise of eternal life in Heaven, in the presence of God the Creator, “Oh death where is thy sting … where is thy victory?”
The deceased has been called home, to a better place, and those who are left behind still have work to do before they too are given their reward.
The reality is no one knows for sure what happens beyond death, what we hold onto is a belief and what keeps us going is faith.
Faith is not only about religion, the basic act of living and being alive, requires a bare minimum of faith; that there is a reason we get up everyday to continue to work towards a future that has no proof of existing.
Losing faith and giving up on living, for some, is a long-drawn-out process that happens in stages and for others, it is a moment of heightened emotion — a crime of passion, against self.
Some people court death by way of not valuing their own life or the lives of others. These are subscribers to the tenet of, death is inevitable so why care so much: “Ndekupi kusiri kufa?”
These people, my cousin calls, DAs, Devil’s Advocates, whose sole purpose in life is to drive the agenda of Satan, which is to kill and destroy, because often they are the ones left standing after acting recklessly and causing loss of life.
I used to teach English to Jesuit seminaries from around the region, mainly DRC, Mozambique and Madagascar. One day during break, one of the seminaries said to me: “Teacher, I see a lot of these trucks in Zimbabwe, why is it so many people have them?” He was talking about the Mazda B2200 (with canopy) that I drove to school. Jokingly, and in retrospect, not a very good joke at all, I replied: “It’s so that we can carry a lot of people during funerals.”
My sense of humour sometimes takes unscheduled trips to the dark side.
The seminary took me seriously. “Teacher,” he said, “in this country I have noticed something, you people are too comfortable with death. Where I come from, we fight to live. Everyday, we fight. Death has to take us by force.”
There was a period a few years back, when funerals were rife, mostly HIV and Aids-related deaths. I believe this is the place from which my joke originated.
But the seminary was right, we have become inured to death and we are often reckless with our lives and those of others, particularly on the roads. Funerals are now speedy three-day affairs that at times can be mistaken for a family reunion or an alcohol and drama-filled get-together of the city’s who is who, where if you were not there, you missed out. Has death lost its sting because we are now all believers in eternal life or is it that nothing shocks us anymore?
I lost two immediate family members in the space of three years and what followed was months of doubt and naturally grief. “Maybe we should have done this and not that, maybe we should have waited, maybe we didn’t pray for the right thing, maybe we didn’t pray enough. We should have noticed sooner. We should have tried something else.”
There is no escaping the maybes, but eventually one just has to accept that when it is time, it’s time. It would be unfair and unacceptable only if there were others who got to live forever and this was the ideal, then we could say, so why did so and so have to go?
We are all destined for the same exit from this earth, as Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world nothing can be certain except death and taxes,” and even then, tax can be evaded.
Some people will tell you that they cheated death. The simple truth is that their time was not yet up. I learnt this through experience.
Twice before the age of 10 I almost died. The first occasion happened when I was in Grade Three during a swimming lesson. What I realise now is that the poor teacher would have been blamed for her unknowingly bad decision to send a naturally disobedient child on an errand.
We had been swimming from the deep end to the shallow end using the railing along the wall to support ourselves as we were not yet proficient enough. I had completed my length and was out of the pool when the teacher asked me to run to the deep end and tell the girls who were taking their time to hurry up and get to the shallow end because the lesson was over.
On a high from having finally conquered the deep end, I ran there and when the teacher wasn’t looking, I jumped back in where I spotted a gap in the line of bobbing swimming caps.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated and jumped too far from the edge. When I surfaced and reached out for the railing, I flailed, catching only water, and went down. I panicked and it was downhill from there. I was going under for what must have been the fourth or fifth time when the girl behind me reached out and grabbed me by the back of my swimming costume and hauled me to the railing.
I have never forgotten that girl, who at the age of nine had the presence of mind to know that this child in front of me is in trouble.
I made it back to the shallow end and lucky for me, the teacher did not notice me creeping sheepishly out of the pool. This is how easily it can happen.
The second time I almost died, again due to my own fault, was when my father gave me 25 cents. In those days the 25 cent coin was slightly bigger than the current South African R5 coin and the best thing about it was that it could buy a pork pie.
The trouble was, I had a nasty habit of putting things in my mouth and I particularly liked doing it with coins. I had been warned over and over and it’s a miracle I wasn’t constantly ill from intestinal bacterial infections.
So, my father gave me 25 cents to buy a pork pie and I was so happy as I ran down the hallway I threw the coin in the air and caught it neatly in my mouth. Only it didn’t stop there, it travelled straight down and lodged in my throat. I stopped short, eyes wide, gasping and did an immediate U-turn.
All those warnings came rushing back to me and I knew this was serious. I ran back to my father gesticulating wildly to my throat which I was clutching while gasping for air. He knew immediately what happened and I remember the panic on his face as he patted my back vigorously, grabbed me by my legs and held me upside down and finally, folded me over his arm like I was a dish towel and he was a waiter about to present a bottle of wine to his diners. This was the position that finally effected the ejection of the coin.
No parent or guardian can keep an eye on a child or children 24 hours a day. No one can control the actions of other people. No one can control what happens next. We can only do our best and that will just have to be good enough. The loss of loved ones hits us hardest, not because we cannot accept that death has happened but because a void is left that nothing can fill, because everything changes and we have no choice but to accept the change and herein lies the sting.
Online Reporter