TGIF - Not For Everybody

I talked to my sister Barbara this evening (she's the second one...the one who doesn't have any children yet). She told me the services will be on Friday. They're not sure if they'll be able to have an open casket funeral, so it may be a memorial service after cremation. She told me that when Kaniu's mother (my oldest sister) was asked about when to plan for the service she said, "He was born on a Friday. He died on a Friday. He'll go home on a Friday." (sigh). I told my sister that Shorty & I will be there, no matter what it takes.

After I cooked dinner for Shorty I went down to the basement where I've been storing my life photos (pre-Italy...which is when I borrowed Barbara's digital camera). I was searching for a picture of Kaniu when he was smiling. There weren't many of him as it was (plenty of Shorty though...and a reminder of how much of his life I've been raising him alone...but that's a whole 'nother conversation), but the few I did have of him disturbed me. Most of them were posed (annual holiday/school studio photos), he wasn't smiling in any of them after he hit his teen years, and I was reminded of a time when I went home for Spring Break while I was in college.

I'd gone home (reluctantly I would guess, but completed because I've always visited my family for the children) and was on my way back to school. My first nephew, Kaniu, was about 4 or 5 in the driveway of my parents' house looking sad. "Aunt Njeri, why do you have to leave?" he asked with so much love and innocence. "Because I have to go back to school," I said with much compassion as I saw the longing for love in his eyes. "But you look like a teenager," he innocently said. "Well I'm an adult," I said to him (I was about 19 at the time...certainly before I'd become pregnant with my own child), "but I'll be back to see you," I promised.

The next time I saw him was when I was home for Labor Day weekend that year and announced to the family that I was pregnant. That Xmas I came home pregnant and married (at the courthouse no less) which caused more drama than peace. That following New Year's Day is when my husband & I got the call that his mother was in a coma...after a damn near successful attempted suicide. I don't have one picture of him smiling after that. Not even in the family photo of all of us the Xmas after my sister Barbara miraculously survived her brain aneurysm 5 years ago. Everyone else was smiling. Maybe we were too happy, too joyful, too caught up to miss that this child was miserable just living life. Too miserable to say "TGIF."