When Grandmothers Die

Her children and grandchildren cry their eyes out, but they are not crying for her. They are crying for themselves, because they know that it’s the end of the home. They have their own homes in major cities but it has always been understood that ‘home’ is grandma’s walls and roof. I don’t mention grandfathers because they tend to join ancestors earlier.

Grandmothers are called something else in Africa. Judging from Bollywood movies, grandmas have special names in India. They are called something else in Brazil, France, Japan and Canada where indigenous people still live together. We become orphans when grandmothers die because they represent a place and a space. We never talk about it, but brothers and sisters call each other and pose this question. Why haven’t you been home for two years? Grandma always asks about you.

Grandmother’s place is devoid of prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, journalists or the repo man. She doesn’t ask questions when daughters return home eyes all black and blue; when sons that used to drive German automobiles return home in a rickshaw; when grandsons visit with tattoos in unknown languages and pierced noses and sons she sees on television explaining why they abandoned the religion she taught them, return home in ambulances. Grandmother’s place is also a lost and found place. Our friends that traveled out to Lagos, Johannesburg, New York City, Miami, Europe, Canada and U.S. knock on her door when they cannot Google us.

Grandmother hates lying but she does to protect us, so that our childhood friends don’t realize that the person sleeping under the tree, drunk out of his mind is who they are looking for. We cry at grandma’s funeral because if it hadn’t been for her, we would have been in foster homes, mental institutions or asking for change inside subway stations and outside coffee chains like Tim Hortons.

I guess I remembered Bill Withers’ classic song today. Grandma’s Hands.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.