Birthday.

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." (From a Headstone in Ireland)

Little Sister,

I want to tell you how very very much I miss you today. Not because I miss you any more today than any of the other days combined but because today is the one day I fully allow myself indulge in the act of Missing You. I lie in our memories, let them quietly cover my head or noisily scream inside my head as my tears soften and melt them, causing them to stick to me; heart, mind and soul. I miss you today not because you are less special any other day but because some days don’t deserve the indulgence of mourning. Some days are not special like today. Today when the heavens stopped to watch the tiny fair being squeeze and struggle to eventually dislodge herself, noisily, from mummy’s person.

Today I am letting it be yours because in all truth it belongs to you. It’s the one day you would preen and prance, turning your head this way and that as the other kids yelled their happy birthdays from their wooden seats as you strolled past their classes on your way to yours trying to restrain your excitement and appear with vacant eyes when your classmates shout “SURPRISE” as you enter into your class. Beaming as everyone pushes a card, or a gift most random…or starts a little chant accompanied by the drum-on-desk to the now appropriately afro-beat remixed Happy Birthday song. I can see your face as you write me a letter or the now permitted email from the breezy computer room that is Mr Sani’s (The Alchoholic’s) lair. I will later read your notes to myself and smile as you describe each present that was obviously much thought of even as we share the understanding of boarding school students with the prioritizing and rationalizing of tiny daily usefuls as gifts. A notebook here, a glittery pen there…You go on and on, throwing about names of friends. The ones I called imaginary. Names, names, names…when will I meet them???!

Then my smile turns to a full-bellied laugh as I read your very serious inquiry; “Why do you always write one-zero-one’s to me when something is funny?” and I glorying in my role as big sister, tease you mercilessly for mistaking my fancily crafted “lol’s” for “101’s. “

Shame I no longer use that account. I can’t afford to look at those messages.

I miss you. As the years go by, I worry and worry that I will not remember your face. The pretty one we told you we would use to get a husband to pay all our school fees and give daddy a break whenever you didn’t do well at school. I worry that your laugh, that almost annoying one that reminds me of a gurgling fart (yes, it did!) will no longer be familiar due to misuse. I worry that my memories will not be enough, for me , for my children when I tell them colourful tales of growing up in a house with too much laughter and so little seriousness. But most of all, I worry about you. Where are you? Are you ok? Who is watching out for you? Who are you hoarding your boarding school stories for? Whose clothes are you stealing? Who is sending you new and improved Yo Momma jokes? Whose friends are you stalking? Who are you grudgingly saying “I love you” to after much cajoling and bribery?

I wish you were here. That everything could go back to what it was. That we didn’t have to cry on the last day of every November or mope on the 10th of December. I wish we didn’t light candles in our hearts and houses, as if their burning flames should remind you that there is always a home waiting for you here, house or heart.

And I will tell you a secret, that death day means nothing to me when perhaps it should be everything. It was after all the walls round my life did a Jericho and fell down round my ears. The date I literally (can you believe it??) saw my entire life, past, present and future sail unchecked away from me as my heart seized and my breath caught as I realized for the first time, “What if my little sister dies?” The first time I realized that I had come to deem Us, The Untouchables.

I can’t believe you are gone, sometimes it seems like I’m talking about someone else’s sister, watching someone else’s life; hearing someone else’s mum cry, seeing someone else’s wonderful daddy’s heart break…or that other girl’s sisters try to be strong. So while I think about you everyday (its amazing, sometimes I don’t even know when I am doing it), I don’t dwell on it. That would make me mad with longing, weak with “What-ifs”. And you know, the spinning on the axis continues with or without you, unfortunately. (Seeing as you weren’t the Hercules holding the world on your shoulders stopping its spins, this of course makes sense).

My Sister, on your deathday when the world mourns for you, I can’t. That day has no meaning to me. It wasn’t with me long enough to accord it that special honour reserved for the day you came into my 6 year old earth. Your birthday. The one I’ve been privy to since I was six. Since I saw your too-fair self for the first time. Since I sat in the kitchen on a tiny stool scooping 2 sweets and 3 lollipops amongst other ‘goodies’ into those party packs for your birthday as you buzzed excitedly around after choosing your ‘fabulous’ party clothes…you the little lady of style, dictating to maids what colours went together once you could talk. I still remember mummy coming back from the hospital after she had you and telling us how she told the doctor on the 30th of November 1992, “The baby must come out today! I have one December child already. I want a November baby. I will not give birth in December!!” Not that I need to remind you but mummy is still a movement by herself.lol.

My dear Abu, lover of tea, licker of limes (which I always happily gave you just to see that ugly, squeezed look on your face as the tart taste slaps the insides of your cheeks even as you look up pleadingly at my 4foot nothing frame and beg the imperial 8 year old majesty for another taste of that sour fruit). I remember just sitting with you watching cartoons after Baby came with her coup d’etat that dethroned you from the Last Child position of power. Your downfall was so sweet to your big sisters who had been dethroned at one time by several military regimes of the baby kind. In its fourth republic, the territory was quite old to us but you didn’t know what to make of it; suddenly your crying was no longer the priority as tired hands dropped you to play with your ‘big’ sisters who teased you wickedly, pinching your eyeballs and calling you Aladdin’s thieving monkey Abu…to your very annoyed screams. Lol. Goodtimes.

In writing this, I realise (thanks!) that I will never forget you. The contours of your cheek bones may fade in my mind, like the sound of your voice or the swagger of your ‘S’ shaped walk, but you are too much a part of me to be forgotten. We belong to each other and like two people that go to the very distant corners of the earth, never to see again in life, we are each sustained by several lifetimes of memories. Poor substitute for the real thing but my sister and friend, I am so happy that you have left these with me.

I Love You.

Your biggest Big Sister




"And, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of Heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun." -William Shakespeare