Online Reporter
Fadzayi Maposah
Correspondent
I got a notification on my phone. It is a message from my 79-year-old mother, Ma Ncube. On my phone she is simply saved as Mai.
The the message, which had no punctuation marks, read:
“Good morning Vasikana (my girl) mamuka sei mese nevazukuru (good morning to you and the grandchildren) ikoko kuno tamuka zvakanaka (we all well this side) makumbo nekuchembera hazvipindirani (old age and aching legs are a bad combination) Pamberi nekunamata.Mwari muchengeti nemuporesi wedu tose. (Keep praying, the Lord is our keeper and our healer) Love you all stay safe warm and blessed mese (Munditumirewo maverse pamaverenga nhasi ndigoverengawo (Please share the verses that you read at Church today so that I can also read them) Blessed Sunday to us all keep praying God is love stay safe and warm mese tese(all of us) Pamberi nekunamata muchengeti nemuponesi wedu tose (Keep praying , the Lord is our keeper and our healer) Love you all stay blessed mese ikoko (all of you) Pamberi nekunamata (keep praying).”
Words of encouragement. My mother checking on me. Just as I was finishing reading the SMS, another notification came in. It was another message, exactly the same as the first one.
If there is one habit that I have adopted from my parents, it is reading. My mother loves reading. Mai will read anything that she comes across, even old magazines and newspapers. As she gets older, she can get away with even reading letters that anyone leaves around! With modern technology, she has a cellphone that she makes full use of!
At times the things that just pop up on her phone leave her confused and you will hear her ask: “Zviyiko izvi? Ndiani aisa izvi muphone mangu?” (What is this in my phone and who put it there?)
She has developed a great love for texting. She is one person that I am sure will text me. Her texts are detailed and most of the time she is encouraging. She does not just text me, she texts my siblings and their families and my daughters too. Her relatives know her for texting. When she texts, her messages are not short.
While you may all be thinking that this article is about my mother’s texting abilities, it is not. She sent the two messages that I mentioned when I was less than a metre away from her.
We were in the same living room and prior the texting we had been having a conversation during which she asked after two of my high school friends, Fari and Eunice. She always asks about them and how they are. Eunice had called and checked on her and Fari and her family had made time to visit her. (Even after talking to them, she will ask how they are and when I last saw them.) It is also a week day and no one has been to church.
When she does not have any verses to read, she will text again just to remind you that you have not shared the verses and she is still waiting. She can even text that because of her aching legs and old age, she is not able to attend church with others.
On some days she texts to request heat rub and painkillers for her aching legs, but she is already on prescribed medicines. My heart misses a beat each time I think of what she could do if she was responsible for taking her medicines. Overdose maybe?
Maybe taking one prescribed drug and ignoring the others thinking that she had already taken them? There are so many questions that race through my mind. As I am typing this she has just got up from where she has been seated.
When I asked her where she was going, she said to take her medicines since she had not done so. I reminded her that she takes her medicines once a day in the morning, and had already done so.
She queried if I was sure that she had taken her medicines because the doctor emphasized that she should not skip any day and they should be taken at the same time every day. I repeated that she took her medicines. How do I know? She asked.
I was the one who gave her the medicines, so I knew that she took them.
Was I not at work is the next question. I respond that I did not go to work. Another why? I took some days off, I respond. Why?
To rest, I answer. Why, am I tired, am I sick? Quickly she adds that if I am sick I should go to the hospital and get medical attention. I simply say okay.
Then why am I typing on my computer if I am not at work and I am resting? I have a commitment to send an article. Oh, as a news reporter she says and picks the book from the stool by her side and leaves.
Despite having turned 79 in September last year, her eye sight and hearing are still excellent. She reads even small print with much ease. She does not wear spectacles and never has. When someone drops something even in the next room, she will ask what the noise was and if anyone is in that room.
Nothing could have ever prepared me for a time when my mother would have dementia. Nothing. Health conditions that we read about seem distant before they knock on our doors. The conditions do not come closer home, they come home. At times we tend to ignore the first warning signs and when the issue compounds, it affects us more.
(To be continued)
