When I first saw her, I had no idea who she was, or what she represented. At the time she had been no more than a faceless woman in my dream, a dream which I never got the time to tell due to the events which were to occur thereafter. I was only twelve at the time.
My name is Janice, and these are most likely My Last Words...
When She Calls...
Day One...
It was a Sunday. I remember because I had been made to wear my Sunday best when all I had wanted to do was go out and play. I also remember because I wasn't allowed to play for the rest of the day either, which was not normal for a Sunday in our home.
Instead visitors had started pouring in. Uncles and aunties I hadn't seen since my birthday, they all came, one after another. They spoke in whispers, and the bits I did hear, I found difficult to understand.
"He's gone..." one uncle said,
"and she thought he was only sleeping in." another aunty whispered in response.
I was confused. Who was gone, and where? And who did they think was sleeping in? The one thing I was sure about though, was that there would be no Sunday Service anymore that day. For papa would not allow once we'd stayed late, and the morning was almost over.
Later, an uncle came and told me calmly that papa had gone on a trip. I remember wondering why papa had not waited until morning to leave, and why he hadn't spoke of his trip before. But I hadn't asked any questions. The day before, was the last I ever saw of papa...
And she had been in my dream that night...
Day Two...
It had been six years since papa had 'left' on his trip. I had grown old enough to understand that he hadn't just left. Papa was dead, and I had made my peace with that fact.
It was hard though. Not on me, but on mama. She was a strong willed woman and she did her bit. Deep down though, I felt she was never the same after papa. She tried as much not to show it, but she was my mama. And I had grown enough to know that the midnight noises I sometimes heard, were hushed sobs coming from her room. I felt for mama, and I wanted those night sobs to stop so much. But when they finally did, it was not in the way I had expected.
I woke up that morning, feeling a sense of deja vu about everything. The cold way the air felt, the strange quiet of the birds, and most importantly, the silence within the house. Mama was always up before me.
I remember walking up to her room, leaning in, and comprehending her very still figure on the wooden bed. I had known before I walked up to her. I had known before I felt her pulse. I probably had known as soon as I had awoke that morning. My mama was dead. She had joined papa on his one way trip...
But then it was only when I watched mama at her wake keep that it had eventually dawned on me. There was something about the look on mama's lifeless face as she lay still in her coffined bed that suddenly made me connect the dots. And at that moment I instantly became aware...
The faceless woman had also been in my dream that night...
Today...
When I first saw her, I had no idea who she was, or what she represented. At the time she had been no more than a faceless woman in my dream, a dream which I never got the time to tell due to the events which were to occur thereafter. I was only twelve at the time. And she had taken my papa.
When she revisited, I was older, and I finally understood why she came. And this time she took mama.
I have never seen her face, neither do I know her name. I only know that when she visits, someone dies...
And last night, twenty years after mama died, I saw her again...
My name is Janice, and these are most likely My Last Words...
#SladenSpeaks
#IfWordsWereNudes
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