My Favorite Memory

A reflexive written piece the explores my favorite memory.

It was not meant to be a beautiful day; in fact, everything around me reminded me just how unhappy I was supposed to be. My home was dark from the shut windows and drawn curtains. Every room filled with relatives and friends that had become family, for blatant reasons, this did not matter because it still managed to feel empty, lonely, cold from grief. My eyes swollen from tearful nights; my nose turned red inflamed from the mountain of tissues beside my bed.

The past two weeks had been a world whirl of “sorry for your loss.”

“he was too young," " you're so strong for your age," " it happens to the best of us."

"Time will heal these wounds." All these words landed on deaf ears as I was too preoccupied with the unending conversations in my head, telling me to swallow a handful of those pain pills and hope to disappear by the morning.

Grief is an almost inevitable phase of life set to rock every part of your being and strip you down to an empty version of yourself needing reprogramming the old self. I was no longer me; instead, I was a walking machine whose only preoccupation was to be able to wake up and try to convince myself that the day prior was just a bad dream.

After the sudden death of my older brother, I quickly realized that what I’d read and heard about grief were all true and yet still did not begin to scratch the surface of what the excruciating pain felt. I’d always thought pain functioned on a scale measured by how much you loved someone, and in obvious ways it does, but the part that I had no idea about was that grief was more than pain; it was a psychological-emotional warfare, which subjected you to a never-ending ball of emotions. I wanted to scream, no, I did scream, I tried screaming myself out of my skin, out of my reality, I screamed until my voice sunk into my throat, and all I could manage was a soft sob. My seventeen-year-old brain was stuck in a loop of trying to process this new normal, and I coped by fixating on each minor daily activity as though my life depended on it. Brushing my teeth, buttering a slice of bread, making my bed, pouring a glass of water became a complex task that required my undivided attention.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel for this story; in fact, I was convinced that whatever goodness life still had to offer would never compare to the heartache I was dealt.

When I awoke on a sunny Friday afternoon in December 2017, mustering the strength to attend to my future through reading my flooded mailbox. I'd been awaiting a response from the many universities I’d applied too earlier in the year during a time when I still had hopes and dreams for my future, when I still daydreamed about the many adventures ahead for my family as we processed in life, never imagining that this moment would be somber, bittersweet. The sweet, being my acceptance into Rhodes University for a Bachelor degree in Journalism and Media Studies. At the time, I was unaware this would be one of my favorite memories because all I could comprehend was the bitterness of loss.

The beauty in this memory lies in the life-changing journey that I was preparing to embark at a university 871km away from home. As I reflect on my tertiary experience, this moment stands out as I find myself on the other side of what once was a daunting moment. The spiritual awakening grounded and elevated me into a wholeness that continues to fill me up on my gloomiest days.