It was a week or two
before my fifth birthday, the night my beloved Nani (Grandmother) died.
Yet she has remained with me for every important event in my life since...
My mother had taken my two younger brothers and I to stay with her parents. Dad was still in the army then I think and my mother, with her belly swollen and round with my sister, due in three weeks, was crying on the phone as she told him the news.
I'd woken in fright. The dark so thick it smothered me, my bladder urging me up and out of the huge bed, eyes riveted to the thin strip of light coming through underneath the door. I managed to reach up and twist the knob, eventually pulling the door open and coming up short as I took in my mother sobbing on the phone. I tried to get her attention as her tears scared me more, but she ignored me, lost in her sorrow.
Still needing to go, but feeling even more alarmed, I made my way through the house where every light seemed to be blazing, to the back door and outside. The laundry and the toilet were straight opposite from the back door, but it was always daunting at night because the first few steps were also open to the outside and the darkness beyond.
I pushed open the slightly ajar door to the laundry and froze as I saw my Koro(Grandfather). He was down on his knees, hugging his dead wife in his arms, his grief so palpable, so raw that even I, so young could feel it. She'd had a heart attack, probably brought on by the epilepsy she suffered, and lay where she had keeled over, half way between both rooms.
I was crying too by then, more from fright and shock than for understanding. I turned away when he took no notice of me and moved hesitantly down the back steps, clutching to the steel rail and crouched over the grass to pee, before tearing back to bed. I'd left the bedroom door open, but there were other voices now, then more wails and crying as others arrived, the sound of car doors slamming shut making me flinch. Someone closed the door to the room and I was once more plunged into the pitch black. Terrified by all the strange happenings, I was sitting up in the bed howling in misery and wanting my Nani.
When suddenly she was there...
A blue-white ball of light stopped my tears as I watched it move from somewhere near the door and grow as it came toward me. I could feel her then and let out a peel of happy laughter as I felt her bury her face in the side of my neck and blow a soft raspberry, the way she always did.
"There, there moko,(a shortened version of mokopuna which means grandchild) Nani's here. You should be fast asleep my baby. Sleep now little one, I'm here. Nani will always be here."
Bathed in the warmth of the light, safe in her loving arms, I did.
before my fifth birthday, the night my beloved Nani (Grandmother) died.
Yet she has remained with me for every important event in my life since...
My mother had taken my two younger brothers and I to stay with her parents. Dad was still in the army then I think and my mother, with her belly swollen and round with my sister, due in three weeks, was crying on the phone as she told him the news.
I'd woken in fright. The dark so thick it smothered me, my bladder urging me up and out of the huge bed, eyes riveted to the thin strip of light coming through underneath the door. I managed to reach up and twist the knob, eventually pulling the door open and coming up short as I took in my mother sobbing on the phone. I tried to get her attention as her tears scared me more, but she ignored me, lost in her sorrow.
Still needing to go, but feeling even more alarmed, I made my way through the house where every light seemed to be blazing, to the back door and outside. The laundry and the toilet were straight opposite from the back door, but it was always daunting at night because the first few steps were also open to the outside and the darkness beyond.
I pushed open the slightly ajar door to the laundry and froze as I saw my Koro(Grandfather). He was down on his knees, hugging his dead wife in his arms, his grief so palpable, so raw that even I, so young could feel it. She'd had a heart attack, probably brought on by the epilepsy she suffered, and lay where she had keeled over, half way between both rooms.
I was crying too by then, more from fright and shock than for understanding. I turned away when he took no notice of me and moved hesitantly down the back steps, clutching to the steel rail and crouched over the grass to pee, before tearing back to bed. I'd left the bedroom door open, but there were other voices now, then more wails and crying as others arrived, the sound of car doors slamming shut making me flinch. Someone closed the door to the room and I was once more plunged into the pitch black. Terrified by all the strange happenings, I was sitting up in the bed howling in misery and wanting my Nani.
When suddenly she was there...
A blue-white ball of light stopped my tears as I watched it move from somewhere near the door and grow as it came toward me. I could feel her then and let out a peel of happy laughter as I felt her bury her face in the side of my neck and blow a soft raspberry, the way she always did.
"There, there moko,(a shortened version of mokopuna which means grandchild) Nani's here. You should be fast asleep my baby. Sleep now little one, I'm here. Nani will always be here."
Bathed in the warmth of the light, safe in her loving arms, I did.
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