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GONE TOO SOON: Chiwala
Of course, one day or night or whatever time it be, life will become heavier than the weight of our hearts. That hour, life turns into cargo we cannot carry any more.
And, so, we will fall in step with a great throng of humans-no-longer-being that snake their way through the gates of life, on to that gate of death-- to be heard of no more.
Well, this is common sense, kind of expected, but, right now, something is not right. Something is not right when an affable man in the morning of his life joins the throng of humanity passing through the gate of life into the cold arms of death.
It is that time, again, when a body lies within a chanting distance but, because the spirit has passed through the gate of life, on to the other side of the gate, the human-no-longer-being lies irresponsive, as if they and us had never been.
People-- now reduced to 'remains'-- we knew now looking so utterly different to us; that moment when memories start to plague the living. In the momentary standstill of death, nothing makes sense. Really.
I mean, how can anything make sense when, overcome by a sense of helplessness after the death of someone close to us, we begin to seek familiarity in strangers. I mean, the stranger called Death.
You hear otherwise wise people say, referring to the stranger Death: "Death is a new promise; the start-point of another journey, that of eternity!"
Nonsense! The only thing that makes sense is you, cowardly Death, bringing our Mphatso Chiwala back. Yes, we want our Mphatso Chiwala back.
We cannot entrust our beloved Mphatso Chiwala in your hands, toothless Death, because we know that LOVE has no currency in your market, which only trades in pain!
We are tired of you, Death, shipping our most productive people by the busload to the doorstep of overflowing graveyards. We have had enough.
What is more; your fatal addiction to the drug called pain means you do not really care about what LOVE is cut with.
That is why we are tired of you, Death, and demand our Mphatso Chiwala back. We can no longer watch ourselves succumbing to the most abiding sensation of helplessness when, in your regendary cowardise, you pluck the people who make us smile from our midst.
For years, you, Death, have ambushed us and burned our flags-of-hope without provocation.
Know, in your cowardly heart Death, that one day we will punish you with eternal life, if not now then sometime.
One day, because you have often stepped outside your known space of darkness to darken our share of illuminated space, one day we will riot in our hearts and the smallest among us will smite you with the sword of shame. Forever.
You are, as your name suggests, a wicked being, Death, and one day you will truly realise that you are, as they say, a "harried and guilt-ridden one".
Even though today, in your cowardise, you scooped Mphatso Chiwala up and carried him, as quickly as you could, out of the sunshine of life into your shadow of death, God will see to it that no hair of Mphatso Chiwala's head is lost.
That day, you, Death, will be a loser; for you will know that you were too unlucky in life, only to be too unlucky in your fate.
You will be made to pay for subjecting those who died inexplicably, those who died horribly, those who died peacefully and those who died fast to unfair trial in life.
You, mean-hearted and un-neighbourly Death.
How should we get by without the ever-friendly Mphatso Chiwala? How?
One day, Death, the sun will fall behind your trees-- where you hide our dead. And we shall reclaim them, causing much relief among all that were so desolate after their losses that they lost the will to live.
Well, despite the coarseness which has become our temporary neighbour today, we shall have a jolly warmth about us when all these pains shall, like today, come to pass.
Oh, let me say that, that day, when your time shall be up, you, Death, will not even feel defeated. Yes, you will not feel defeated because you did not fight a REAL battle in the first place.
All you, Death, were doing was ambushing people, taking them by surprise. It is not a REAL battle.
But we, Mphatso Chiwala's friends, shall have REAL victory-- because we shed REAL tears and hoped REAL hopes.
Until that day, when Mphatso Chiwala shall be there again, smiling in our faces, allow us to lapse into brief silence. We want to think about the good times we had with Mphatso Chiwala, who is just a half a world away.
In fact, we are just half a world away-- from Mphatso Chiwala!
