Chaos and All of Its Friends

Before I begin, I’m going to address my intent to ignore the elephant in the room : my long absence away from this blog. I’ve thought over how I’d address said absence over the past months. Apologising, rationalising, a mad mix of the two… But now that I’m writing this, I’ll just say thank you to the people that stayed subscribed to my sarcophagus of a blog, probably because you forgot to unsubscribe, but I’ll take that all the same 🙇🏾.

This year will certainly go down in history, as the disruptive depressing mess it deigned to be. And in my personal life, it bore a handful of landmarks, both expected and not.

Expected :

I graduated from medical school.

Unexpected :

• The viral pandemic that exposed the flaws in our health system and inefficacies of most of the world’s governments
• My father dying two days before my graduation.

I was told the day after my graduation, my sister’s voice soft over the phone. I can hear my mother in the background and for a few seconds I’m waiting for her to reprimand my sister for the horrible joke she’s telling, to say anything.. The growing silence matches the growing void in my chest, and when i start crying, I don’t recognise myself.

I’ve talked about death before on this blog, where i state the importance of having open honest conversations about it, talking through loss, especially in spaces outside of where said conversations are usually confined : funerals, grief/suicide counseling… I still feel the same way now, knowing how talking about everything with my family has kept me sane.

I began this year with my biggest worry being my waistline and it’s perserving expansion, then onto the fear and loss the Covid19 pandemic brought, the uncertainty it lent to making plans for the future. Each new concern in sharp contrast to the first, and the superficiality of it.

Maybe that’s why I was expecting bad news when i picked that call from my sister. Why the growing void resonated with “so this is what comes next? This is the next awful offering this year brings me?”

   “I think of death during autumn, when the leaves turn and fall to the ground. I think of death in the stillness of winter, trees stark and bare against the sky.   I think of the new leaves that replace the old during spring. The rains that fall and replenish the earth, turning everything green again.  I think of my papa dying when I was 13. The realisation that the person I stared at in the open casket wasn’t him. I think of the little boy in my street that turned up dead in a neighbor’s drainage system and how it was never explained. I remember not being able to stop crying because it didn’t make any sense. ” – from here   “I think of death during autumn, when the leaves turn and fall to the ground. I think of death in the stillness of winter, trees stark and bare against the sky.   I think of the new leaves that replace the old during spring. The rains that fall and replenish the earth, turning everything green again.  I think of my papa dying when I was 13. The realisation that the person I stared at in the open casket wasn’t him. I think of the little boy in my street that turned up dead in a neighbor’s drainage system and how it was never explained. I remember not being able to stop crying because it didn’t make any sense. ” – from here

Now, i also think of death in summer, in the month that took my Dad from me, the loud noise his absence brings. But, also I think of the conversations i have with my sisters, our laughter enveloping me and drowning out the noise. I think of the quiet moments i hug my mother to distract her from pointing out I haven’t done my chores. I think of my brother stopping by to gist with me while i try to make sense of the mess in my room…

I think of how the void in my chest gets smaller and smaller with each new echo of “i am home. All will be well. I am home.”

stay safe. listen to medical professionals. call your loved ones. ❤️