…a brief glance…

…I never really write anymore, and if your strength has always been how you put things into words you feel a great sense of failure in not being able to form sentences, let along a series of sentences that go together coherently.  Can I pin point when it all began… absolutely! However it did take some time. In fairness, I guess I always knew it but it some ways I felt I gave it power if I spoke it out loud.  In the end, it was releasing to know what was keeping me from actually allowing myself to use my gift as I had been given it.

A couple of months ago marked the ten year anniversary of my Mom’s death. For some reason, this milestone, if one can really call it that was just as hard as the first. As the days neared my emotions were heightened and erratic. There were a lot of tears for reasons that did not warrant tears, but tears they came.

As siblings, we did as we always did…band together. It’s what we do, and it’s what we’ve always been taught to do. Through our differences, and annoyances of each other, one thing that never fails is that we’re there, front and centre for each other. It’s what we do.

As we neared that day, we planned for it. What were we going to do? What time? In our hearts however, I think we just wanted to see what it was going to look like. Preparation was a near end of the week trip to Costco, and if you know the Napiza trio you would know that Costco has the potential to be ‘Walmart circa 2003’. If you have been around us enough, you would know what that looks like.

As the night before reared, I coped by going to bed early only to wake up at that time. Like clockwork every year since. It’s like when you suddenly wake up from a dream with a start, your eyes open wide and for a moment every thing is clear and how you remember it to be. It’s a moment, a fraction of a moment, and then reality hits and you remember. Lately, while sadness lingers in that moment, there’s comfort and a sense of her presence there. That I will always have that moment where I got to be there as she took her last breath. That in that moment she’s reminding me that she’s still there, and that moment is ours.

Losing Mom, was sudden, heartbreaking, life changing and potentially soul wrecking but I was, and I am anchored in God and his perfect plans for my life. I may not always be gracious about it, and I may bang my head against the same walls and look to the heavens in frustration but I have never doubted where God was, whether I felt it all the time of not. I just knew he was there. That his grace covered me and all the things I did, and refused to do.

Let’s be real, the last decade has not been easy, and I have never felt more challenged and rarely equipped than ever before. It felt like everything was a battle all the time. I wondered why everything always had to be a fight. More often than not, I enviously looked on to others whose lives just seemed easier, and how the dreams in their heart got to be fulfilled, over and over again, and mine were just still that…dreams.

I would like to think I have learned much in the last year or so, and I learn repeatedly that life is not meant to be easy, that challenges come to not just me but to all. That it’s how we face those storms that determine whether we stand still in the rain or do we jump the puddles in our stride to get to the other side because we knew that it too shall pass. I’m still working on that.  I would like to think that I have learned not to make the same mistakes and that I catch myself in time before I go down a familiar winding road, that I have learned to stop and unpack before I get to the point of no return. Some days I do that better than others.

I’ve been learning lately that you can spend years investing in people, only to find out that they’re not going to be doing the yards with you. You learn to open your circles and realise that God has placed people in your life who want to not necessarily be at the front row of your life, (some do) but want to at least in the room. That it’s the people who bother to call you back, make plans, and actively touch base with you that are meant to be there. That you celebrate those moments, and not dwell on those who are no longer there and just be grateful that once upon a time, they were there once and that season blessed you.

I ended 2017 with a bang, in a rather multi faceted way. The night of the car crash was a night filled with doors meant to be closed and remain closed. The weeks that followed it felt like I was in a haze of just trying to gain back my footing. For days, and weeks the loud bang rang in my ears, and being in a car freaked me out…let along driving one.

However, when you have responsibilities and basically a party of one, very little time is allowed to wallow and you’re thrust into pushing aside your new found anxiety (to add to those you already had) and just pull your big girl pants on and deal.

So 2017 thus far hasn’t been the leap with arms wide and heart abandoned as I had planned, hoped and imagined it to be…but it has not been without its blessings. I feel that doors I had asked to be closed has been, in such a way that I can’t question it or take it back.

I recognise the seasons of 2016, in hindsight there were so many lessons I got to learn. God restored so much, he restored me. He has positioned me well, and I must remember that whether I feel it or not, he positioned me where I am meant to be.

I am incredibly critical of myself, in what I do and what my capabilities are. I often don’t see what others see. I know I am gifted. I know that God works in and through me. However, at the first sign of failure it devastates me and I feel a sudden panic like I am drowning at see with my arms flailing. I guess that’s in this years ‘unpacking’…

Last week, as I endured another sleepless 30+ degrees of heat without air conditioning I checked my email long after midnight and received an email that to be honest, rocked me to my core at the mere subject heading of ‘Mom’…I hastily opened it, scared to read what was inside it. My heart fell to the floor as the words ‘stage four’ seemed highlighted, bolded and underlined before my eyes. I felt for my friend on the other side of that email. Whilst it has been over a year since we had last spoken, and exchanged anything more that occasion based greetings our history came flooding in and it negated time and distance. In that moment we were back to Calvin and Hobbes, C & E for all terms and purposes.

Today, I know his life has been changed in a way where it will never be the same again. Today I know that he has felt heartbreak he has never felt before nor will again. Today he has to reconcile how to face a loss so great that it literally feels like your heart has been ripped from your chest whilst you’re wide awake. Today he has to realise that every so often he has to remind himself to breathe in and out, because today something so simple is incredibly hard, because today he had to say goodbye.

I have the fondest memories of the woman I quickly dubbed Aunty Jean, another South African Aunt I managed to acquire in my two years in London. Throughout the years, more often than not she was a third in local and transatlantic phone and Skype conversations. It would not be complete without her two cents, and then some. Mostly, at the expense of one person…and it was not me.

It was hard having those transatlantic whatsapp conversations this week knowing that she wasn’t well. It hit me tonight, that she will no longer be a third in those conversations.

I drove home tonight, and for the first time in awhile I felt the need to write without filters so here I am….

Much love to Aunty Jean, as she joins my Mom up in heaven. Chances are my mother’s already introduced herself to you. You never got to meet each other this side of eternity, but I sure am glad you’re getting the chance to meet each other now.