The Big Mystery!

Death.

Death? Yes! Everybody is headed there. That’s perhaps the only thing that human beings have in common. It definitely justifies the phrase, ‘All roads lead to….’. We don’t know where, or even if we do, we are not in the the necessary capacities to justify it. About time, don’t even dare go there. It could be just about any time, within our time dimension.

Life.

Life? Surprisingly yes! That’s what humans have but most of them haven’t figured out yet how to handle. Usually, we pretty much have the idea of what life is like, based on the idea of choices and consequences; that if one makes the right choice then their lives tend to be smooth but with wrong choices, life becomes miserable. Life is deep, bears a lot in it, a lot of lessons.

I didn’t have the slightest idea of how that day would turn out but I was ready for whatever it would bring along. Like every other high school kid, I prepared myself accordingly­­-carrying extra cash in case we came across any shops with edibles. When representing your school, you will agree with me that you automatically become the flag bearer. You carry the flag of your school. So, you have to look good. I did-Kuna vitu I never bahatisha like looking good. Not all the time though. It depends on the occasion and with the one at hand, I sure did represent.

We would walk our way to the hospital, visit the patients and talk to them and thereafter clean around and later leave for school. That was our club activity, The Straight Talk Club. The club second to my heart after Drama which I was actually kicked out of (later on in campus I would meet with the drama teacher and to her amazement, I was in drama doing very well-it’s a karmic world!) I bet that’s where I learnt how to be very straightforward when dealing with various issues. Anyway, we were set to leave school at 8:30 am. After the debrief at the assembly grounds, we left. That excitement kicked in, the kind that fills someone up when for once, in a long time, one is able to look at their school gate but from the outside. The joy!

My oh my (insert Jeff Koinange’s tone) the amount of work there was for us was next to impossible, with an exception of possibility. So, it was possible. First things first. The patients. Probably all patients had to feel the love. We divided ourselves into groups so we could reach out to as many of them as possible. Talk about strategies, that if you wanted your troupe to cover a wider range then division had to come in handy! I fell under the group that was to cover the right wing. The wing with octogenarians, them that were weak and often attacked by diseases due to old age. Well at least they had lived long enough to see another generation grow and can clearly tell how the world and everything in it had evolved overtime. Old is gold y’all. You can only imagine the amount of information you would get in case you was to collect info through any form of oral tradition. Wrong platform, my bad!

We further divided ourselves to be able to cover the rooms within our wing. Two by two we entered different rooms, talked to different patients, gave them flowers and get-well-soon cards and left for the next rooms, with their permission. Sharon and I entered ward 113. Sharon and I didn’t get along for some reasons and she didn’t know how to hide her pettiness. She displayed it. She left me alone and clearly, that marked the end of teaming up with her for whatever activity would come in next. The room was well furnished with modern equipment and I could tell that the old lady had been visited recently. I wasn’t sure of how I would do it on my own but I had to. That was what I came for.

We clicked from the moment I let out a tiny ‘hi there.’ She smiled broadly and reached out her hand to me for the greeting. She said she was doing okay, that the doctors were good to her. Had she mentioned the contrary, I would have scolded them big time. Her speech was slow and there was no way in the world I would have wanted to hurry it up. I wanted her to take her time and tell me everything. In no time, we were already friends. It’s true that friendship is born in those ‘me too!!!’ moments. We had a lot in common and at the back of my mind I knew that God had given me that grandma I never had. What a blessing! We laughed at this and that, giggled here and there and made fun of every little thing. She said she felt youthful again, perhaps much younger than that. I was happy. Putting a smile on her face was a great achievement. Later on, she asked me to call up the nurse because the water in the drip was running out and for a friend, I did it gladly!

I was back in barely a minute with the nurse’s message. Loooord have mercy!! I was shocked at what I saw. My mouth dropped and my eyes popped out. I felt shock travel throughout my body in tingles. I had never seen any human being in such a state. She was there wriggling in pain and calling out names, which I later concluded might have been those of her relatives. I went close to her and held her right hand. She held on tightly to mine too. I called out loud to the nurses and doctors. I was scared. Scared of losing my new friend. Scared of having to be the one who saw her last. Scared of being scared. I was just scared, too scared. All of a sudden, she calmed down but still held on tightly to my hand, the she fumbled some words. She was struggling to speak and I, keener than ever, gave her all my ears. The nurses came in, changed the drip and assured me that everything would be okay.

The rest of the club members had gone through nearly the whole hospital but I was stuck in one ward. I was not planning to come out any sooner, even though we were running out of time. Josephine, my new friend, on the other hand, seemed to want to say something to me. She had been trying to get my attention which was far travelled into the deepest of thoughts. She began by telling me that I had been her best friend in the short time we had spent together. She went on to add that it wasn’t my words that made her happy, it was my spirit. She said that she saw the light in me and knew that God had answered her prayers. She urged me to continue with the same spirit and serve as many people as possible, that it would open up doors for me. Doors that I could never dream of. Then she said that she was happy to have made friends with the greatest leader, that God had raised her in her last moments of life. She asked me to remain humble and serve others diligently. She then loosened her grip on my hand. Her breathing became fast again and with a tiny ‘goodbye,’ she left. She left for good. I watched her drift away to the other world with tears rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t save her, she went just like that, in my arms!

I spent the next half an hour at the door, still in disbelief. I saw them cover up her face up. There wasn’t life in her anymore, only a lifeless motionless body. Her journey had come to an end. Death had robbed me off a friend. Then came some people, singing hymns to console themselves. None of them was in a position to ask me what the hell I was doing there. I wasn’t relevant to them in any way so I made myself scarce. I joined the others. All his time meditating on life. It’s a complex thing we think we know about when in reality, we don’t. We don’t know what life holds in store for us. We just live each day hoping to see the next. Going back to school for me was so long a journey than that from school. Me? Leader? What did she mean? If you think deep about life, there’s much more to it than what meets the eye. A bunch of complex mysteries!