I Nearly Forgot My Mother

MOTHER’S DAY REMINDER. It was a big sign, on a flower shop window. It depressed me because it implies we forget we have mothers. You are missing the point. Am I? The flower shop is reminding us to buy flowers for her, take her out to dinner, get tickets for an Iniko concert or bring her a basin of warm water to soak her feet, like we used to, when we were little.

The problem with getting old is losing the right to speak your mind, to say I don't like this because daughters will sulk and say: Mum, you don’t appreciate anything I do for you. I read a novel where the daughter never visited her mother, but sent gifts like nylon stockings, for a woman who could barely leave her hospice bed. Other daughters are responsible for the care industry that specializes in seniors. Immigration knows about it and provides visas to caregivers from other countries because England, Canada and the U.S. cannot take care of its bed-ridden aging population.

Foreign caregivers do not have fancy certificates on the wall about looking after old people. They are used to it in their own countries, where grandmothers and grandfathers are part of the agriculture, the hunting, passing down skills and the language to kids, and the love. In other countries love is ageless. It is given to everyone under the same roof. That’s why they don’t have MOTHER’S DAY because it is every day, every month, every hour.

That’s why other countries don’t have what is known as an, aging population problem. 

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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