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Time of death: 00:36
Date: 01-01-2025
The paramedic’s words ring in Mthombeni’s head, loud and deafening. He clasps his palms over his ears, but his efforts prove to be futile. He can still hear the fireworks exploding, people screaming ‘Happpyyy’ and in the mix of the chaos in his head is his wife’s strained voice telling him that she can’t breathe. It rings in his head until it starts feeling like an echo that is making his head pound. Before he can deal with the voices, he’s now moving in circles—desperately wishing everything to go away.
‘Move away!’ the paramedic’s voice echoes in his head.
‘Everyone please move away!’
‘We lost her… We lost her…!’
“Sabelo!” someone screams his name, but he is way too occupied by the voices in his head to care about people calling out for him. “Sabelo, where’s my sister?” he hears what sounds like Owethu—Anele’s sister—asking.
“We lost her…” he echoes the paramedic’s words and his voice cracks just as it sinks in him too. His wife is gone, Anele is no more.
“What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where? What kind of a joke is this?”
“I…I…” his mind fails to form a coherent sentence and he just stares at her. He is no longer hearing what she’s saying, her lips are moving but he can’t make out the sound. He tries to shake his head, to bring himself back to where he is but fails dismally. The place has become mute, all he can do is watch as people move their lips and hands.
“Sabelo!” someone is calling out to him again, but he is unable to keep up with the voices in his head and the people around him. He feels like a prey being devoured from different directions and it hurts. “Sabelo, stay with me!”
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SABELO
I wake up to a room that is way too white to be our bedroom. Anele hates white so there’s no way she could have woken up and decided to surprise me with a paint job. I try to move my left arm and it hurts. I look at it and almost jump off the small bed that I find myself on.
“What the hell? Hospital?” I pull the drip out of my arm and get down the bed.
“Where are you going?” that’s my brother, Mthobisi. What is he doing here?
“What happened?” I ask. He’s looking at me pitifully and I wonder what’s wrong with him because he knows that I hate being pitied.
“Oh, Sabelo,” that’s my mother coming in.
I’m still trying to figure out why I’m here and why my family is here when my mother’s body crashes on mine and a tear-jerking sob escapes her lips. I’m not dead, am I? I rub her back until she calms down. All along I’m trying to silently ask my brother what is wrong but he’s not helping. Only Anele knows how to communicate with me using her eyes. Where is she? She could have long helped me clear this confusion.
“What happened?” my mother asks as pulls out of my embrace and sniffs. Shouldn’t I be asking them what happened? I just woke up in hospital and there’s no scar on me, the only thing I’m feeling is a banging headache. “She didn’t deserve to die just like that, she was way too young—”
“Who is dead?” I ask and they both look at me as if I’m speaking an alien language.
“Sabelo,” now my mother’s voice is soft and low—almost like a whisper. “Sit down,” she says.
I hate how she’s looking at me right now. The last time she looked at me like this was when my twin sister died and she had to break the news to me.
“What’s going on, Ma?” I’m getting impatient now.
“My son,” she takes my hand into hers, she’s shaking. “Your wife left us—”
“Left us and went where? Did she decide to take the annual trip on her own this time? Wait, what day is it?”
“The first of January,” Mthobisi says and like a gust of wind, memories of the previous day flood my mind and I feel my intestines freeze. My throat is parched instantly.
“Ma… Mama—” my voice gets stuck in my throat and tears fall down my cheeks.
‘Peace. Peace is all I’m asking for’, her voice echoes in my head and I can vividly see her smile. I reach out to touch her but there’s nothing in front of me, just an empty space.
‘I can’t breathe,’ these were her last words. I couldn’t help her, I couldn’t save my dear wife.
****
My brain is a bit foggy, I’m struggling to keep up with what’s happening around me. Now I find myself in the bedroom, at our house.
“We have to move her to a private mortuary,” someone suggests. I don’t even feel like being part of this conversation because I’m not ready to accept that my wife is gone. It’s unbelievable.
“I think we also need a private postmortem done. I don’t understand how someone who was so full of life can be gone, just like that,” someone else opines.
“We need a death certificate before we can plan anything further.”
My mind drifts and I find myself in the kitchen. Anele is angry at me because I was late to pick her up from work. This is the first time that she’s not talking to me because she’s fuming. She’s a chatterbox, so it’s always hard for her to keep her mouth shut even when she’s angry. She is standing on her toes and struggling to reach for something from the top shelf. I place my hands on her hips and pick her up so she can get whatever she’s looking for.
“Put me down,” she demands. How ungrateful is this wife of mine? I decide to toy with her emotions even more by not putting her down. “Put me down, Sabelo!” she hisses.
“No, accept my apology first.”
“You want me to forgive you for making me wait an hour for you when you had said you are fifteen minutes away? Why didn’t you tell me to Uber?”
“I got a call from the office and I had to go back.”
“Put me down!”
I finally put her down but I don’t let her go. I pull her to me and kiss her on the forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her and I see her lips parting into a thin smile. I want to kiss her again but she just disappears and all of a sudden I’m in the bedroom surrounded by my family. It hits me again, my wife is gone.
“Do you guys have funeral policies?” Nokubonga, my sister, asks.
“Yes. But can we take this slow? Why are you all so quick to get things done?” I ask and they all gawk at me.
I ask to be excused and walk out of the bedroom. I regret my decision as I come to a living room that is filled with gloomy faces and their eyes turn to pitiful stares when they see me. I don’t wait for any of them to talk to me. I just walk straight towards the main door and exit the house. I settle in the garden and take a deep breath. I take my wife’s phone out of my pocket and log in to her banking App. I know she had policies, she always complained about debit orders chowing her money before she could do so. I always reimbursed her for those debit orders and more. My wife loved me, but she loved her salary even more. I didn’t complain though, I would still do it again and again.
My heart breaks when my eyes land on a savings account saved as ‘For Our Baby’. She had saved over R200K for a child that we were still planning for. She didn’t want our child to lack anything. The other savings account is for our birthdays and it has a little over R100K. She loved celebrating our birthdays and would go all out—weekends away, lots of activities and gifts.
I stop looking at her savings account and go to policies. She does have a funeral policy that has a R150K payout. I’m about to log out of her banking App when I notice that there’s another policy. I click on it and my fingers freeze on the amount.
“Three million seven hundred thousand Rand life cover?” words escape my lips even though I didn’t mean to. I’m not dreaming, am I? I check again and the amount is still there, staring at me as if it is taunting me—equating my wife’s life to six zeroes. Is this all her life was worth?
“Brother-in-law,” Owethu says as she sits next to me.
“Hey,” I rub her shoulder. I know the pain she’s going through, her sister was everything to her.
“How are you holding up?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I shrug, putting the phone away.
“I wish I can say this too shall pass, but I will be lying to the both of us. This is something we will have to learn to live with,” she sighs. “Elders want to talk to you.”
“I don’t know if I’m in the right state of mind to be talking to anyone. What is it about?”
“Money and stuff. We have to buy food to feed the mourners while burial preparations are progressing. As we speak, more are trickling in to pass their condolences.”
“Take my card and handle everything. It’s in the bedside drawer. I’m sure there’s enough money for everything. I just want to sit here, alone, for some time. Apologise to the elders on my behalf.”
“Okay,” she stands up and pats me on the shoulder. “Qina s’bali.”
I watch her as she walks back into the house. My mind goes back the amount I just saw on Anele’s banking App and my heart skips a beat. Why do people take life covers?
My phone rings just as I’m trying to come to terms with everything. It’s my cousin calling.
“Cuz,” I answer the call.
“Hey. My condolences, bafo,” she says.
“It is what it is, hey,” I sigh.
“I’m calling to check how the preparations are going. I’m coming later tomorrow and I also wanted to let you know that she had policies with Old Mutual, too. Do visit their offices.”
“What kind of policies?”
“A life cover, if I’m not mistaken. I would check for you if I was in the office.”
“Thanks,” I end the call.
Another life cover? What the heck? I wonder how much that one is. What am I supposed to do with this money? Is it supposed to comfort me?
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