The day in the life of a family in grief Guest BLOG Nadia Naidoo

Words cannot describe what I felt that day. All around me emotions set off like uncoordinated fire works that hadn’t been secured in the ground properly.
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It was 2007 and, like every year, my family was in Cape Town celebrating the Easter Holidays. And like all major holidays consumerism was at its best. That’s how I remember I had gotten a Lindt Easter bunny. I refused to eat it because it was so perfect but I loved just looking at it and thinking how delicate it actually was.
I was in my sister’s apartment and my parents had gone out for some reason or the other. Everything was going great until I walked into the T.V room and saw my sister sitting on the floor against the wall holding her head. Not thinking too much about it I went up to her to see if she was alright. Then I saw her face and noticed the horrified look it portrayed, and she was crying. I asked her what had happened to her, she didn’t hear me, I asked again, still nothing, I asked again, nothing… and then in a small murmur of a voice she gave me the answer. But it was no an answer I liked, not at all.
When you experience grief you react in a way that strange to you. I thought I would burst into tears on delivery of such news, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I felt peculiar I wanted to cry because that would be normal but I couldn’t. Then like a flash flood I felt sick, and cold, and I felt like I was trembling but I was still.
This was the day my three month old cousin died due to a reaction to sulphur. Our holiday came to an abrupt stop like a car would in a head on collision but in our case there were no airbags. I felt guilty because I didn’t want to leave Cape Town and go home, home seemed so much colder. Home was reality and I didn’t want to face that.
I so desperately wanted it to be fake just some sick twisted joke. I believed it wasn’t for a while and at any moment someone would tell me the truth I so frantically willed to be right. But that was wishful thinking or possible temporary dementia due to grief.
The flight home was long and tiresome, but I couldn’t sleep even though I was terribly exhausted. I felt like heavy like all the fluid in my body was made up of lead.
When I got to the funeral home my life whirl pooled into an abyss of lament. My whole family had fallen into the abyss with me. The worst part was looking at the mother of the baby, my aunt, she looked vacant. She was merely 23, early to mother hood, but she didn’t look her age she looked haggard.
The weather on that day was perfectly grim, not raining just grey. It seemed to have sucked the entire colour out of the world. I felt as if I had been transported into an old movie, genre: horror.
I still couldn’t cry, and I so badly wanted to, it is not easy watching all the strong men and women in your family cry while you sit still unable to show emotion. I didn’t cry until days later. I felt in alone in my emotionless façade, alone surrounded by my blood, my family.
Its crazy how you can love someone you’ve only met five or six times in your life. It is engraved in our genetic make up that we develop an instant love and affection for babies. You cannot help but fall entirely with out a choice for them
I opened my suitcase that night and found my Lindt bunny, smashed into a million pieces, no longer perfect. Looking at the crushed bunny I could not feel sad nor could I feel the joy I once felt in preserving it.
Nadia Naidoo