Tales about my Aunt
I have decided to write about the women in my family, past mostly and some present and its just a reflection of who they were to me when I was a young woman and how chasing 40 has me thinking a lot
My Aunt never married, not as far as I know but she had 2 kids in her 20s and her last born came years later, I was old enough to understand what pregnancy is by then and the last born is the only one left at the moment.
Religion/ faith was a big cornerstone of my aunt’s life, as with most things in life, I sometimes wonder how much of the systematic challenges (apartheid) and the men she loved led her to being overly religious, taking her kids into the fold and eventually losing them because they couldnt live with the burden of perfection that she placed on them because of her own life disappointments.
I say this because I had two cousins who both died young and their deaths, to this day, make very little sense. My cousin who was married off before she turned 20, a big white wedding by our family standards, with my Aunt proudly reminding anybody and everybody once in a while that she might not have walked down the aisle but she had a daughter who did, she became a mother of the bride and I can imagine the pride and a consolation of sorts especially because she wanted marriage or a stable, consistent love at the very least. the one thing that evaded her.
I always wonder who my cousin would have turned out to be if she wasnt a young wife who developed an alcoholic addiction, inherited and made even worse by the choices she had to make to appease her elders. Nono was known for being polite and ever smiling, you couldnt get an angry word out of her & I know she was all those things and more but i wonder who she could have been and its one answer I wont ever get.
She had a brother, back in the day when Aids was killing people in their thousands, my Aunt was hiding her dying son too, giving him portions and taking him to healers to clean his blood and buy him time, none of it worked, he died before he even turned 25, dying with secrets unknown because according to his mother there was no way he could have had AIDS, he was a religious man who had devoted his life to God and anybody who hinted at him testing for HIV, back then, was asking to offend because how dare we even hinted that my cousin was having sex, but my cousin was dying because of AIDS.
I remember visiting him before he passed and we hurdled in the bedroom, trying to make conversation and not show the fear we were feeling on our faces, I was a young kid then, i dont know if i managed to do that well but he tried to be the easy going guy we all knew, telling us that he was going to get up one day and lead a church service. that is who my cousin was.
My cousins never got to experience themselves outside the blanket of religion, their faith kept their mother alive, I have no doubt but it took them away because they kept secrets from her, making childish and often dangerous decisions that were not necessary but because we are not allowed to disappoint our parents, they never got a chance to live long lives, or at the very least, catch up to 40.
When people and their parents die, its the responsibility of the living to make sure they are never forgotten, they add to a family tree and dynamic that a lot of us are often privileged to experience, its not everybody that gets to live and tell tales about the forgotten and I might make peace with my family so I could get more information about the people they were to others, because Im currently working on my own recalls and i was a child so it wont always be clear as it should be.
Chasing 40 while trying to figure out life confirms to me that my cousins were just children with adult responsibilities, burdened with healing wounds they didnt even know where they started and hanging up their dreams and desires, their identities, so they could live up to an attempt at redemption by my Aunt. Expecting our unfulfilled dreams& expectations, to be carried by our children because we had nobody else to help us navigate the maze of life and trying to make sense of an oppressive world is leaving so many bruised and imprisoned. I am hoping that as I write more about the women in my family, I find a way to live through my womanhood and my adulthood without spending my life grieving for unfulfilled desires & dreams, expectations and I want to be able to get to the other side and say I did well, not only for myself but for my daughter and those who might come after her.
I wish I had known more about my aunt besides her being an uber religious drunk who had her heart broken too many times to count. There has to be more to life and existence than suffering until your dying day and I want that for all us. Black Womanhood deserves a never ending happy ending too