‘Kobaa Maama?’

‘Where’s your Grandmother?’, Kaafa asks, 7 days since Maama passed on. 

With a lump in my throat I asked him where he thought she was. ‘At the hospital, no?’, he replied. ‘No Kaafa. It’s been 7 days since Maama passed away. Do you not remember?’, I broke the news yet again. Perhaps breaking his heart too, for the 2nd time that day.

He looked confused with troubled and wandering eyes. 

The both of them spent 60 odd years together and during the comparatively negligible lifetime that I’ve been around, I’ve never ever seen Kaafa so dazed, confused and troubled. 

‘Pray, Kaafa. Get better and pray. That’s what we can do now for her, no?’, I told a frail old man in a single hospital bed in the room in the house where he spent years upon years with Maama. I took his hand and whispered, ‘Be strong. Get better. Pray.’. He nodded and closed his eyes. 

‘Kobaa Maama?’, he asks.