It is true what they say about grief – you do learn to live it. Find a way to carry it. Sometimes it feels a bit crazy that I carry so much grief for you. I describe you as the love of my life, darkly as the one that got away – he died. Great conversation stopper. The simple truth is I haven’t found a love like ours in the 18 years since you died.
This grief might be all grown-up but I’m still lost. Friends try to tell me to move on, that it was just a short relationship. How serious was it really, they ask gently? Only a few months. A few life-changing months.
My life is so far away now; it has been a long time since this suburban mum danced badly in clubs and recovered with cold beers and a braai in a bottle store on Sunday afternoons. Sunsets, warm sunshine and any number of R&B tracks reignite old memories.
I have taken myself back countless times to our first meeting, when you and your friends picked me up on a very hot and dusty African afternoon as I waited for a bus that might or might not be coming.
I couldn’t quite believe that a lift home had magically materialised, and you were all a little surprised to find this white woman with sore feet in this quiet, rural bottle store. It wasn’t the first time you rescued me that weekend as I tried to negotiate being myself in a hostile world.
I felt so safe. Anxieties and fears I had held for months ebbed away in your embrace, were calmed and silenced as we told our stories. But in the midst of this love was a devastating threat. The arms that held me became too thin. I heard the doctors tell you you had tuberculosis and needed an urgent lung drain. Then I had to be the one to tell you that it wasn’t just TB. That this was Aids.
You looked up to the ceiling, blinked and silently accepted any combination of tablets and remedies I could find for you. Your strength kept me strong. And you picked me off the floor when I collapsed in the early stages of HIV infection. We held on to each other when other friends began to slip away.
Until I had to leave. No more money, no more work to stay for, no more visa. You helped me pack up and carried my boxes with the last of your strength.
I left you and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.
I wrote, I called, I sent vitamins. It all seemed futile and you had battles to face on your own. Without proper treatment, you continued to fade and I could do nothing. You died six months later, on your own in hospital. That has haunted me for the longest time.
Through your family I keep you in my heart. I try to imagine you with grey hairs in your beard, like your brother has now. I wonder if I would be teasing you for an expanding middle-age waistline. I love my child just that little bit more because you never got the chance to be a father and you would have been a great one.
Mostly, though, you are a companion in my heart. The raw physical hurt passed, the guilt eventually too, guilt for surviving. I’ve been positive for nearly 19 years, and somehow I managed to stay completely healthy for over 15 years. If only that could have been you. Long enough so that you, too, could have benefited from the new drugs.
I’m not quite sure what I believe, except that the Bible is a very tricky document. But I do think that sometimes you are with me. In the most difficult times, I like to think that you are just there. Which is maybe crazy but I don’t care. It helps. I have also recovered. I know I can fall in love again and I hope I will someday find someone else to share stories with. But even if this is rose-tinted nostalgia, I will love you until my dying day.
Kiri
