He died, but I can’t stop thinking about him
Dear love of my life,
It’s been 12 years since I last saw you, I still miss you. Unlike some people, I refuse to visit a shrine to thank some long bearded spirit that probably hasn’t brushed its teeth in decades. Instead, let me write you a love letter. It’s a lie that time makes us forget, because even as I write this, my heart and eyes are filling up with tears of love. I still ache from missing you all these years.
I am glad that I met you when I did. I’d have preferred that you stay longer, that we live forever but such is life. You can only hope for the best. You influenced my life in more ways than you can ever imagine. When you passed on, it was the start of a long difficult road ahead. Looks like I actually made it, or at least I am trying my best to.
My love for you will always be pure and undisputed despite our numerous fights and disagreements, you are irreplaceable. You will always be my first love.
I remember on one of those Women’s Days when you would take to the kitchen and say you were in charge of the cooking for that day. After a trip to the market that saw you buying about three kilos of beef, a basket of tomatoes and onions, you would then proceed to ‘cook’. I remember watching you almost filling the pan halfway with cooking oil, cutting about 15 tomatoes and 10 onions to fry three kilos of meat, all this for a meal of three people (one adult and two children). We endured the over-salted beef dripping with cooking oil with big smiles but inside we were ‘dying’.
You didn’t know this but that day, when you left to go run other Women’s Day errands, we gave the meat away to George the dog and even he refused to eat it. He just rolled his eyes and run away.
I also remember how you used to scream at any boy who dared wander into our compound to get the hell out of your home! It was funny because those boys would walk in like they were doing the moon walk. Very smooth and confident, speaking American/Congolese English and then after a few seconds of meeting you, they would run for dear life, away from the crazy old man with an afro and large-framed eye glasses.
Or how you would never let my mother go to the market but drove her there and then asked her for the shopping list and then proceeded to go get what she needed because according to you, it was a man’s job to hassle in the market. How you bought her a plastic rose every valentine’s day and drove her for dinner at Sunset Hotel which is just less than a kilometre from home.
Or how you used to spend nights seated in the living room in the dark holding a spear ‘mbu’ you were watching over us while we slept.
The way that you loved us helped create the women we are today. Strong, independent but loving and kind. So for the millionth time, thank you for showing us what love looks like.
And thanks to you, I will never be that girl with daddy issues. Seeking to make some unlucky chap do what my father should have done or run away with the first man who as much as winks at me or not know how to love people back because I wasn’t loved. Instead, I get to write a love column.
Ps: We still have the same President since you left.
