"To die with your boots on"

In the recent past, many of my students have lost loved ones. Friends, relatives, a parent or a sibling. So, I wanted to write and speak on death from the heart.

Death is many bad things: it is as destabilizing as it is exposing – it destabilizes every part of you and throws plans completely off course. Death is exposing because suddenly everything is in the open – family secrets, private life, behavior people knew nothing about, people and their nature, and so forth. Death draws out our human curiosity-we ask many hard questions that cannot have answers, and even questions we have answers to – but we ask them anyway.

But in all, (to use a popular Kenyan denigration here), there is a Ka-pain that comes intermittently, and a ki-pain that lasts and lasts. The pain can paralyse you and the reality of death can cause you to operate on unreal emotional and physical strength.

My mother

On the night my mother died on the 10th of August 2020, I saw a call from her number at midnight and I stared at the phone blankly. I did not answer it.

Mum had been in the ICU of Kenyatta University Hospital. Shortly after her call, the hospital called using a landline and when I answered on the fourth ring, a voice asked me if I could go to the hospital – and I just knew. I was alone in the house and had not slept for days. I tried to go upstairs and my legs could not move beyond that first stair. I cried dry tears.?I wept for my mother before I was told she was gone.?I couldn’t think but I could smell nothingness. I was completely gone from my world for a good few minutes while stuck on that first stair. I had taken care of her in life, and now I had no responsibility over her whatsoever. She slipped and left and probably wanted to let me know she was leaving when my phone rang.

Death, my dear students, is equal to pain. Sometimes we only know the pain when we go through it, and no 2 pains are the same.?And because it is a reality that we must face, I found a few quotes that can ease the process of mourning our loved ones:

1.??????“We cannot think our way out of grief. We must feel our way out of grief.” ― Angie Corbett-Kuiper

When the pain comes, allow yourself to feel the pain: Cry. Wail. Sob – allow the pain. The pain comes and goes or goes and comes. Let it. And it will follow this pattern in many seemingly endless ways. When the moments of intense sorrow come, allow them. Talk or write through them. Live through them but be aware they will ease.

2.??????"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure." —Unknown

As you talk about the departed loved one, discuss both the great memories, the dangerous memories, and the ‘not so good ones’ as well. Mum’s younger sister told my siblings and I that mum did not just begin her tough disciplining reputation with us. She made her 9 younger siblings understand very early on that she was the GOAT on matters discipline. Sometimes in very unpleasant ways. We laughed about this and recalled many times that my elder brother, George, came home late and got matching orders to go back to where he had come from at the late hour of 7pm. We treasured those memories, because we are the sum total of the memories we create.

Mum was a generous soul. She was a spiritual woman. She was deeply humane, and loved to cook, chat and laugh when she enjoyed great health. She genuinely cared for people.

3.??????For those who believe in God, death is never an end but a transition into perfection. Death builds our faith which is why we say in pain but with confidence “till we meet again.” Death reminds us of the hope that we cling on to, that there will be “no more death…or sorrow or crying…” as well as the knowledge that God will, and does, wipe the tears. We may often take it for granted or argue that it is only time that heals, but I am persuaded God does heal the broken hearted- and time may well be one of those ways He created.

The Strathmore fraternity recently lost a wonderful priest – Fr. Manuel, who for many of us, died ‘suddenly’ while on an excursion with students, friends and colleagues. During his funeral Mass, however, the presiding priest said something deeply moving: For priests, death is never sudden. Priests are always ready and willing to die…the desire of every priest though, is to die with his boots on. Fr. Manuel sat one room away from me and his door was always open. He always smiled, even to those like me who had never taken time to sit with him.

There are many intellectual ways of looking at how to ‘die with your boots on’. Of importance, though, is to understand that death will come our way, but we can live on in the hearts and minds of people by breathing life into their lives. The choice to love. The choice to serve. The choice to be selfless. The choice to listen. The choice to say a caring word. To point out a path of unseen danger. To be present. To encourage. To give even when it is not asked for.

Those who have left us made their choice of boots, and we who are still on this journey, have today to choose which boots to wear.