I was nearly arrested possessing 'crack'

Death. Death is a strange animal – if animal means something cruel. It so inexplicable and always been so. In my life and in my family, death has always played shy of making its grand statement. The only time that it kicked down my family door was when it took my cousin – a dearest friend whom I couldn’t say goodbye to (exams at Rhodes) and my grandfather – a true arch fountain of wisdom. And now that I’m feeling that I’m on, by metaphor, my deathbed, I wish he was here.

The pain is killing me, nearly literally. The toothache is going to bury me I tell you. I’ve been on Grandpa (painkillers) for the past 72 hours and at this moment, as I write this after some meditation and a silent prayer in this cold study – pale walls staring at me like death itself, I’m forced to reflect and draw the cold parallels with death.

It’s almost as though my own life is slipping out of my mouth. The pain telling me that I’m gripping you until you give in. Almost like the roots of my life and this air I breathe, is steeped in my gums – which at this moment, the part to the left is nearing blue/black and collapsing inside – useful information courtesy of wifey dearest who had to act dentist several times throughout the night between 1am and 5am.

I haven’t slept an hour. Everytime the crack-like painkiller faded, I’d wake up in pain, tossing and turning needing more. Now, I’m facing the death of my tooth. I have faced it before, and it was pulled out with a pair of dentistry pliers – wish such force the pain was in the motion of force than in the pulling by that man in a white coat. I face the reality of pulling another one. Why the parallels of death?

Because this time the tooth is a front one. In less than six months I’m losing my second tooth. And this man, this husband, this father, is only 25. What the fuck? Can’t I be left alone by this strange death and the tooth fairy so that I be the handsome looking hubby and father, than one with gaps when he smiles – and for me, smiles are life. Taking away smiles is taking away my life [Uncle Sam’s When I See You Smile plays in the background].

Only if my old man was here. That wise traditional healer would now be putting some African concoction together. Spit a passionate prayer into it. And voila. My tooth stays and the worm eating its nerve falls out for me to kick its ass into the middle of Modo. When last I was this miserable, it was when me and my wife faced the devil. Face to face. Literally. The meet was about brokering a deal. To decide whether we give our last daughter life or not. Beautiful Tinyiko is now two months. Hail pro-life.

So that’s where the death parallel kicks in. The misery of choosing to keep or to let go. Give life or take life. I’m going to try and stand the pain. Find some alternatives. And first, I have to look to African culture practices before I go European. For my grandfather always went Africa first before chopping and pulling things out.

When a man is on his ‘deathbed’, his mind starts really working in congruent with his heart. And all that he wanted to do, he swears that given a second chance (out of this one), he would do it no procrastination. That’s me. So much in grave pain that the emotion makes me pledge that if go through this one – bring on the game. Lord just this once, I say. I will live by my word and achieve all that I wanted to. That’s death for you. When it stares you in the face and looks up your mouth, you start calculating in reflection.

I frankly don’t know what was the point of this entry. Especially since I’m in so much pain and here am I seating in a cold study blogging. I guess death can’t rob me of my writing. For I am expressive. I’m an expressive soul.

PS: The only excitement over this miserable weekend was to shop for straight three hours at the mammoth Menlyn Mall with Princess Talia – just the two of us, albeit the tooth fairy kicking my ass. Talia even made us eat Wine Gums regardless of daddy cool’s grave misery.

I sure looked dangerous, black face covered up to eye level with a scarf. Somebody must have thought Laden’s man in the house. Duck duck everybody. Duck. What with all those stares. If arrested for questioning, they would have found crack in my pockets as I carried the white dust with me to chew on every 30min. Grandpa does look like crack right?

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire