The Dark Mother’s Day

On the 9th is when the world will be celebrating mother’s day and the irony of it is my dear friend, Becky lost her life .She lost her life as she was giving a life(birth). So that is the irony. She passed away at Paragon Hospital so it is safe to write that it was an untimely death.

Today morning, I called the sister,Edith and these were her words,”Be strong Roland, the baby is healthy, you know it was a premature but pray for mum”. Now in life and growth it is okay for a child to bury their parents but not the other way round. So I can’t imagine what the mum is going through. There’s a literal phrase in runyankole, “okuchwa amabeere” meaning an event that literally plucks off the breasts and this is founded in Motherhood so I can safely write that Becky yatuchwa amabeere . Iam writing this in a motherly context because of what Edith told me on phone today. When I found out about the news, I was literally speechless ( the irony of impaired speech is that you rarely speak and since writing is my speak nowadays, I took the feelings to Facebook.

Well I was not sad rather I was morose. Becky is a good friend and even up to now, she was on the Whatsapp group,’Friends of Roland’ . It was opened up after I fell ill and these friends continue to stand with me. I met Becky actually on a bus yes from Mbarara in 2011. I was in second year and she in third year so she was my Senior.

Becky was the kind of person who would literally ‘put you in line’ I recall the last time we met,it must have been at Mateo’s just above Nandos then so it is really long. That time she was at Tibeingana.

In 2012 was her graduation from lawschool and she had invited me and Alexander to attend. There was one challenge,we were dead broke that even the church mice would say,’We are poor but in Roland and Alex,we have company’. When you are invited for a graduation,as courtesy, you are expected to go with gifts. But silver and gold we didn’t have but could only write a congratulations card, we even co- wrote on the congrats card that’s how bad it was and we were pocketwise. Becky was the better human as she read the card,later and even called me the next day, ‘kwonka you guys disappeared and I didn’t serve you cake’ . That was the greatest lifelesson on friendship, sometimes all is needed is the presence of a friend not gifts or money because I am certain that they were other bigger gifts when all we brought was a written card.

I remember when KAA wrote in a tweet celebrating her as WCW, I called her and because of the faint voice, she didn’t get me and in a conversation later, she joked about thinking that the caller was a stalker. So that was the light side of her

So Mother’s Day will be dark because Becky’s mother has to bury her and she has succumbed to a motherhood battle. My thoughts are with Joab, Penny Andrew, Joshua and Edith. Mugume, Becky yataaha.