I BELIEVE that for all of us, we have experienced loss and we have seen loss. Someone you love and treasure, the one who holds your heart ─ the center of your world ─ suddenly departs this world and you are crushed.
Being far from home, in foreign lands, we have all left someone, something in Zimbabwe, or wherever you are from. We said goodbye at the airport. When we landed at our destination, we made God promise that He would keep them safe from hurt and harm. We placed our faith in the heavens above. Some even made little ceremonies to ancestors long passed that they watch over those souls that we left behind. We have all gone through that journey, where night and day, you ask for their covering, for them to be spared in this world so full of uncertainty.
I don’t know why you left home or what triggered the decision. What was true for most, if not all of us, was that need to find a better life for ourselves and, through us, a better tomorrow for the ones we love. Women have left children. Some so young that it broke their hearts. They have left husbands and homes. They have left everything, just as men have left their wives and children, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmothers. Everyone has left someone; everyone has left a piece of their heart back home. Some left small pieces, other huge chunks of their heart. None-the-less, the pieces of our hearts are left with them.
We come to these foreign lands, so full of blossom and discovery and you flip the coin, there is much heart ache and despair. A great price to pay. We arrive with big plans for the future and hopes of a reunion that is not too far into the future. With faith in our hearts, we hope for the promises of life to be fulfilled. For those who are lucky, the promise is held but for some of us, it all begins with that one call. The one you didn’t expect today, the one you didn’t plan on at all. The voice on the other end does not hold the usual smile and joy, but some form of sorrow. The are afraid to tell you sometimes, and they try to distract you with silly stories, but you know all is not well. Then they tell you, one of the pieces to your heart is lost. It is no more, passed away this morning, so fast and sudden.
How could this be, how could it happen? What of the agreement you made with the ancestors, the one you made with the heavens and GOD? The promise that was not meant to be broken, the one ensured they would be kept safe until you went back home? Until you had accomplished what you came for, to make a life for yourself and them? What of the prayers, days and nights on your knees, fasting and crying that your loved ones see another day? What happened? So many questions go unanswered, so many things go unsolved. Yet the reality remains, the one you loved has died and you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
If we had been warned of this impending end, if one has whispered something in our ear, surely we would have prepared ourselves. Said all we needed to sat, laugh at all the stories we needed to share, said I love you and had all the good times possible. We would have not gotten on that plane so soon; we would have made all decisions a bit differently. We would have even begged to have their life saved and sacrificed our own. We would have done anything and everything possible, we would have had a chance to say good bye. Why does it happen now, when we are thousands of miles away? Such a great separation and now is the time that their life is taken. We cry and cry and cry, and the tears don’t stop, worse still when w can’t even go home to see them one last time before they return to the earth. When we can’t be there to see their final resting place. When we are not given the chance for closure.
That one call is just a first in the series many calls we will follow, as pieces of our hearts die and our should slow die with them. Today it is an aunt, tomorrow a sibling, the next day a parent, then maybe a spouse or child. So many of us have lost loved ones, some so close to us we don’t know how we make it each day without them. So many pieces, so many hearts broken. With each new day, as much as there is hope, there is also some fear of when the next call will come. We did not choose this, to live from the ones we love. We did not plan this, not for this outcome. For us to have loved ones die one after another while we are so far away from home. For us to have the dreams of our plans shattered with each loss.
The sacrifices are too may and too high to a price to pay. What shall we go back to when we go home? Who shall greet us with joy and ululation? Who shall we share our future with? Who shall pay the price?
So many questions with no answers but hearts filled with brokenness and sadness because our world has forever changed.
READER OPINIONS
jason pawuma • pawumajas15@gmail.com Subject: broken hearts Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:22:51 • Once again, Rumbie delivers! What a beautifully scri pted piece full of sadness, yet inspiring. The travails of diasporians are heartrending: the striving, the lies, the cheating, the broken families, the demeaning mcjobs with their mcwages, the incessant discrimination, prejudice and put-downs especially for the less book-educated. As one plying his trade in the diaspora, I yearn for home; I cry for home; I have lost loved ones; I have been divorced (in the diaspora from a home girl/wife of over twenty years). While the material aspect may be easier compared to the home situation, the psychological and psychic scars ravage our souls. The reality is we are now in-betweens, hybridized, the classic and iconic postcolonial subject- not fully of the diaspora, and now a distant blur where home is concerned! thanks Rumbie, for reminding us of the broken promises and sadness!
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