Stop being a model mourner; spare time for friends and family
Athlete Beatrice Chepkoech sips ‘mursik’ as family members and friends welcome her after landing at JKIA from Kampala. Spending quality time with friends and relatives is rewarding. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- A few years ago, a close relative was admitted to hospital. I kept saying that I would visit him, but something always kept cropping up and I kept postponing the visit.
- On the weekend that I actually planned to make the long-delayed visit, I learnt that he had passed on.
- The familiar way of doing things, of living life, is safer, warmer, comforting, familiar. That is why most New Year resolutions made with determination and good faith flop almost immediately.
Death. It has such a sense of firm finality, and is often accompanied by numerous regrets from the ones left behind, accompanied by many statements starting with, “I wish …”
A few years ago, a close relative was admitted to hospital. I kept saying that I would visit him, but something always kept cropping up and I kept postponing the visit.
On the weekend that I actually planned to make the long-delayed visit, I learnt that he had passed on. A few days before, one of his children had told me that he had been asking about me, wondering why I hadn’t visited. This broke my heart even further.
I was devastated when I heard the news, and was especially wracked with guilt at having not made time to visit him in hospital.
In the days following his burial, I made a point of attending the burial arrangement meetings without fail, feeling like a fraud throughout it all — I imagined that his immediate family considered me a phony, I mean, if I had no time to visit him in hospital, where did I suddenly get it after his death?
UNFAMILIAR ROAD
I had not had time for him when he was alive, yet here I was, having dropped everything I had been unable to drop while he was still breathing to serve mourners tea and bread.
This incident reminded me of my grandfather’s death. My father’s father and I had been close. Growing up, I spent lots of time with him since, at the time, our home was a stone’s throw-away from his.
I was the one that washed his house on weekends. By the time he died, in his nineties, I had long moved away from home and no longer saw him as often as I would have liked, and so when he died, I felt as if I had wronged him because I hadn’t visited for close to a year.
I long gave up on making New Year resolutions after realising how futile it was – human beings are creatures of habit and, therefore, wrestle with change as if it is a despised nemesis.
The familiar way of doing things, of living life, is safer, warmer, comforting, familiar. That is why most New Year resolutions made with determination and good faith flop almost immediately.
We suspect the change would be good for us, but we are unwilling to walk down that unfamiliar road.
This year though, I made a resolution. Just one. That I would keep in touch with friends and relatives, that I will not wait until they are sick to find time to call, text, WhatsApp, or visit them.
The money I give for their burial will not benefit them in any way, but that which I give when they are lying on a hospital bed will.
It is not too late to make a resolution to stop being a model mourner, the one that generously gives of himself and spares nothing when someone they know dies, yet the last time they saw or talked to that someone was during a burial 10 years ago.
Your relatives, friends and colleagues need you now, not when they are about to be buried six feet under.
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This is the best this year and I am a non-smoker! Amazing how you observe some of these things. Things that we all see but we do not give a second thought. You are right. Smokers have no tribe and no words are ever spoken. You left my bones aching the other day when you had to ask for directions to Kiambu Town from Ndumberi! Thank you Carol for always cracking us up on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings.
Chege
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You are right. Actually only a smoker can stop a smoking minister or governor on the street by simply proffering his unlit stick. I once got lost in Rome and an Iranian, of all people, offered me a cigar and took me to my hotel, some two kilometres away.
Julius
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You hit it right on the head in the article “Key lessons to learn from smokers”. To a great extent the lessons can also be learned from small children and drunkards. Thanks for always being on the spot.
Daniel
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Your article today reminded me of sometime last year when we travelled from Nyeri to Ukambani to bury a colleague. By the end of the ceremony, one of us, a smoker, was in the company of total strangers who on knowing that we were together with our guy, offered to take us on a brief tour of the town. I was keen to note that one thing they had in common was they all reeked of cigarette smoke. A real issue right there! Thank you for putting it up.
Ronald
