Jesse

Jesse

You were only fifteen years old when you left home….

Presumably to try to make a living in city.  In retrospect, it was the best thing you could have done; and probably saved your life in more ways than one. Remember the night, years later when you threw a knife at our dad, and it got buried inches away from his head in the door he was standing against? Had it happened sooner (and it was bound to), you might have spent a whole lot of years in jail. The judge wouldn’t have been able to imagine how he provoked you; how he made all our lives a living hell.

‘if something happens to you on the way to Cape Town, don’t come running to me.’  I’m in tears, once again. I got accepted at the University of Technology to study Human Resources Management. Mama forbade me to go if I wasn’t going to study teaching. ‘How do you imagine you’ll pay the tuition fees? I’ve never heard of anything like Human Resources Management. At least if you did teaching, the government will give you a grant and you will always have a job.’

Do you remember, while Mama was ranting and raving, and placing all kinds of curses upon me….’honour thy Father and thy Mother that thy days may be prolonged’…. how you packed my bags and shoved me into our sister’s car? I never thanked you for that.

If you didn’t come home that holiday, I would’ve either been a teacher or worked as a grocery packer at Shoprite! Nothing wrong with it; just not how I saw my life turning out.  One of Mama’s favourites: ‘ If I’d made my mind, I would have kept you at home to work at Shoprite’.  Needless to say, I survived the trip to Cape Town; how I prayed the Lord to keep me safe. Even if it was only not to give Mama her way! The irony is that everyone gets told the story of how she sacrificed to pay for my studies. I don’t suppose the fact that I studied my ass off to get scholarships, amounts to much.

You loved me to death, and at times I hated you for that….god, you could never stop telling me how much you loved me! But I loved you back, in more ways you’d know; I just couldn’t say it…I was so young…I’m sorry…I never told you I loved you….and you sang for me, and you played your guitar for me….Scarborough Fair,  Homeward Bound , Midnight Blue….

I haven’t seen you since almost ten years ago; you were visiting me, staying in the loft bedroom of my first ever house…only you called it the attic…I got a fit because you finished nearly all the alcohol reserved for my wedding! You never made it to the wedding though; suppose I’ll never know why. At least you know what I looked like on that day. I’ve seen the photograph in its honorary place in the frame of a painting, on your living room wall. You’ve never stopped loving me…and now I’ve come to bury you.  At least we’ll all be together under one roof in more than thirty years.

So long Jimmy….brother of mine.

‘I’m sitting on the railway station, got a ticket to my destination



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