Rabbie Serumula, author, award-winning poet and journalist. Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha
It had been almost two years since she last laid eyes on her lover. Almost two years of her memory in limbo, waiting while amnesia purports to be patience.
In the twilight of her life, like a lone flame waiting in the wind, my grandmother’s spirit flickered, caught between memory and reality.
With each passing moment, the weight of impending loss hung heavy in the air, a haunting reminder of the inevitable.
As her grasp on reality loosened, the unravelling of a lifetime of love and resilience unfolded further. Her eyes, once bright with joy, gazed into the distance with a haunting emptiness, searching for a presence lost to time, to eternity.
And then, in the quiet stillness of her final breath, she surrendered to the embrace of death, leaving a legacy of love that would forever linger in the chambers of our hearts.
She had forgotten that her husband had died. In her mind, she was waiting for him to return, only for her to join him this week.
As we mourned her passing, like a bittersweet symphony, memories flooded back with each note as a reminder of the joy she, and her husband, had brought into our lives. And though the pain of their absence cut deep, we found solace in the knowledge that they would live on, that they would love each other again, guiding us through the darkness of our grief from the other side.
In the days that followed her passing, we pieced together the fragments of her life, the enduring legacy of a love that knows no bounds. And as we whispered her name into the silence of the night, her presence hovered, a gentle reminder that love transcends even the boundaries of death.
In this column, two years ago, I wrote about the last visit my cousins and I took to go see them, a lovely couple of 99 and 96-years-old, in Limpopo when they were alive and still in love.
And a month after that, I wrote about the passing of her lover. And the beginning of her survival – what would be a two year span of selective amnesia; a defensive mechanism of sorts for her to sort of remain sane in this plain in the absence of her soulmate.
Hanging on to breath, she waited. My grandmother may have found comfort in selective memory, but in her final moments, she embraced the truth with a courage born of love.
As we lay her to rest, we celebrate the enduring legacy of a love that conquers all, knowing that in love, she and her beloved will forever dwell, a timeless totem of hope in a world where love is as shaky as the ground we walk upon. It is her funeral today, and I am honoured to have immortalised their love story, both before and beyond the grave.
Saturday Star
Rabbie Serumula
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