Potter’s lessons on grief

I realised how central the theme of loss and grief is in the Harry Potter books after trolling the net for quotes. I did not prominently remember this theme from the book. It seems human to take what we need for where we are at from what we engage in? Or perhaps, even in this, I project?

The Prettiest Girl in the Room

You will always be the prettiest girl in the room to me.

This will never change. Through the colourful mountains, warm perfect sunsets, stormy, rainy, lush-tree horizons and warm, snowy snuggles we move through in our 52.5 years life gives us.

Still, will you be the prettiest girl in the room. For it is a pretty soul, sound and sunshine that swirls with you as you whimsy through the world; this is the beauty I see everytime I am fortunate enough to spot you.

Dialectic Indeed

Her Return.
“Separateness is the key to any good relationship” said my therapist once. I thought to myself what utter hogwash.

Upon her return, I completely agree. Everything is so special and exciting. Her morning, sleep smiles. The lines on her tummy. Her long, catch up stories told in her uniquely animated way. My lies on her tummy. I am devouring it all and can’t stop smiling while I do.

Post Her Leaving
Fuck my therapist and her hogwash! Rage rumbles within as I endeavour to be one with her for eternity. Mangle us like tree roots and watch us skip through the world with everyday a giggling adventure.

Blessing

You are the love of my life.

Boy walk bounces hitting on me amidst the Autumn leaves enroute to cross the road by the Chapel. The world spun slower and briefly it stopped. Your eyes, perfect brown, almond eyes.

You, my last flash. Funneling my favourites. A moment in the bath, a whirl, hurling of water. Wash my soul, letting it yearn to be free to who I loved, me and mine.

Almond, brown eyes. Resilience, feist, humour, kindness, brilliance: Beauty.

Sayings

“Even a worm will turn” – Auntie Ann

“Nobody has milky hands” – Auntie Ann

“Honey dripping, trickly sweet” – Auntie Ann

“Sour puss face” – Auntie Ann

“Harry’s ducks’ bums’ face” – Auntie Ann

“We all have our crosses to bear” – Auntie Ann

“His a dog-pig” – Auntie Ann

“King of the arses” – Auntie Ann

“God is good” – Auntie Ann

A list for you.

There was very little we agreed on; socially, politically and emotionally. You had so many habits and ways of being in the world that I considered toxic. Still, you cheered me on at every event in my life from the school galas to moving abroad. You were nasty and bred competitiveness in the family. Still, you never forget a single birthday of mine even if we were furious with each other. You taught me to cook, crochet, laugh as hard as the heart desires, gossip and be a fiercely ambitious individual.

Fallible love, flawed as it was you were. Laugh, write and reminisce I shall.

Sales, hoarding and red toe nails. Indented on a chair with a water bottle that shall never forget your lips. Rooms and roads echo with your vicious yelling and bellowing, roar of a laugh. Rudimentary observations, many unlearned and unpacked, remain filed in my memories and there it lies, imperfect, love.

Fallible love, flawed as it was you were, my prickly, picturesque rose.

Always I shall remember: “there’s a howling in my veins, a wild in my blood forged by generations of women who taught me to trust my voice     nd.”

Grief in the time of a pandemic

Ominous exhaustion berates my breath. Mulling my senses. I hopelessly, hope for warmth, breath, purpose and embraces. A touch free family engorged with the timeless, unfaced echoes of brown trauma.

Solace lies, whimpering in the willowed, white forest. Attempting to bellow louder from afar, a feint lovers cry gripping at a distant, wanted hug.

Mull, mull, mull; mulled warmth, mulled frenzy, mulled exhaustion and mulled confusion.

Breathe, breathe, breathe; breathe warmth, breathe frenzy, breathe exhaustion and breathe confusion.

Stop, stop, stop; stop pleas the feint cry…

Cheron Road #1

Intergenerational trauma steals love and stomps on the trying, kindling embers.

The core system will be brittled, broken and miserable. Problems are ranked hierarchically according to intersections. This is the world one will aspire for; let our problems be weighted fairly. Beitbridge will then provide the same burdens upon which to begin the long walk to global introspection.

Returning to the heart. Sheriffs will be commissioned by scarred mothers and served upon troubled, scarred children and grandchildren.

Chronicles of Tšhegofatšo

My partner passionately informs me last night that we will not be in need of the flat sheet as she knows the weather in Durban precisely at this point in our relationship. Contextually, Tshegofatso was born in Limpopo and grew up in Centurion thus has limited knowledge on Durban weather. Basically intermittent visits during our three year relationship. She proceeds to inform me, filled with gusto and ample pluck in her demeanour, that she is making a grave sacrifice for the relationship sleeping with merely a duvet on such a cool night.

I hope the tale of such comical dramatics emphasises the endearing, capturing nature of my sweet’s personality.

Christmas Narrative

I am fat and a failure.
What is worse, everyone thought I would be less fat and a success.
I can spew body positivity, racial justice everywhere but I am fat and a failure. And a Queer.

At least we learn about black political liberation struggles at school. Nobody teaches you how hard it will be to have succumbed to the pressures of the world and comfort eaten yourself to obesity. To have been a respectable individual then had your dignity sucked away by a break down, Queerdom, terminated internship, four year masters programme and dependency.

I was once the poster child for achievement but the thing about achievement is that you have to continue to achieve at that level. Or you will be deemed a pressure buckler, a failure to your parents, your kindness will not matter, your life situation not worthy to be truthfully shared. You will lie to people with your mother’s support, those who pry or genuinely ask eager for their children to jump the high flyers queue.

One day I was socially admirable and the next I was an eccentric, a Queer, a fat, a failure, an unable to sew their life together, a tattooed child, a smoker, a revolutionary thinker, a dependent that once had potential. And people began to say, “I don’t know what’s going on with your life?!”

Perhaps you ask why I care, I was taught to and so were you. We all were in varying degrees. I more than some. As I wake up in fits of panic attacks repeatedly choking, I am made aware of how comprehensive an education I received in the economics of appearances.

The shame and anxiety I experience every festive season has rendered it a terrible time. I yearn for how I loved this time as a young child with minimal expectations and merely torturous aunts to endure for the merry duration.

The paradox of *amanzi

I am water.

I love water. I live water. My element is water.

My favourite bodies of water are sea and the cold, fresh water of the Ukhahlamba.

I love water and I hate sea sand. The largest water bodies are ocean. Largely,
one cannot exist without the other. On many a day, this thought helps me make sense of why I struggle at times to be in the world.

An existential crisis flowing from primal, innate and passionate core emotions.

*Amanzi means water in Zulu. My goddaughter, aged 2 years, shouts this so passionately when she would like a drink. My narcissism occasionally allows me to fool myself into believing that she is calling for my soul.