I Love Funerals

Every so often a person will die,

A funeral will be held to let people cry,

But I am not people,

Not twelve-year-old me

I'll tell you right now,

I love funerals you see.

See one day my mother sat me down one day:

She said: "Lukey, Aunty Fay has passed away".

I looked at my mother,

My eyes open wide.

Who's Aunty Fay?

And how did she die?

My mother looked mad,

Like I was a sinner.

I knew that tonight I was not getting dinner.

She said: "Aunty Fay was your grandmother's sister, she walked with a cane, and by the end of her life she was going insane".

I thought and I thunk.

Oh yes, I remember!

She gave me money every December,

POW!

My mother klaaped me upside the head.

I knew by then, that thought was probably best left unsaid.

And so off we went,

Down to KZN

Twisting and turning along the Amajuba bends

As we got to my Granny's house

I was hunger-stricken,

But she had already made food;

Pap, Chutney and her famous fried chicken.

And so, I indulged.

And soon I was finished.

Granny offered more:

"Umtwana yami, you're looking quite thinnish"

But I quickly declined and said I was fine,

A hoot at the gate!

My Great Uncle Clive.

Without a beat

Or a moment's hesitation

As he stepped out the car

He said: "Laaitie, go get me a cold one, a nice icy Castle Lager"

He stared hard at my face,

"Aye you look just like your father".

And so off I went,

Used to being sent.

And sent I was as more family came through.

Filling the house with such familiar food.

Large buckets of scones

And skaftinis of koeksisters

Steaming pots of poijie

And plates of home-made roti

A melting pot of flavours

I savoured the smell.

But something was off,

Even at twelve I could tell.

The smiles of my family did not curve so high

And granny held her grief down to the bones in her thighs.

I could cry.

But I didn't know why.

I never knew Aunty very well

But inside I felt my heart begin to swell

And it burst when we buried her

And from then I decided that every so often

A person will die,

A funeral will be held to let people cry,

So perhaps I am people,

Young twelve-year-old me,

But there was something amidst grief that I started to see.

From tears that fell to the grief-soaked earth

Tears of love into flowers gave birth.

To the memory of life

Against the amnesia of death.

Recollections of Aunty Fay

Lay in the stories unfolding in the oxygen we breathed

Beneath every ocean of tears,

In scope they gathered,

It mattered then that we had dry land to stand on.

Call it a family,

Or maybe a home

But open was our land to let Ubuntu roam.

Every so often a person will pass.

And tragically we're given the burdensome task.

To heal what is broken.

And yes, wounds live beyond repair.

But in living in love,

We do not die in despair.

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