The Cracked Earth.

 

The earth has taken a decent lot from me.

My mother.
My son.
My brother.

Three people. Three graves. Three reasons I sometimes wonder how I’m still breathing.

There’s a kind of silence that falls after loss and it's not the peaceful kind. The kind that howls under your skin. The kind that makes laughter sound like betrayal. The kind that turns everyday moments -  washing dishes, folding laundry - into acts of defiance, because how dare life keep going?

But it does. It always does.

One of the most gutting graves that I've had to stand over was my mother’s. I remember that day not for the ceremony, but for the absurdity of it all. How people kept saying “She’s in a better place” while I was standing there wondering where the hell that place is, and why she wasn’t still here, cooking, singing on the fly, lecturing me with love, being our lighthouse.

They lowered her in, and I swear the sky dimmed. Like even the sun understood that something holy had been taken.

Grief came with a face then. Familiar. Terrifying.
It sat at the table. Slept beside me.
It followed me into every room like a shadow I never asked for.

But I didn’t know then that grief could come in waves - deeper, darker ones.

Months earlier, I had buried my son.

I don’t write that easily. Not because the words are hard, but because they are blasphemy to a mother’s soul. There is no proper syntax for what it means to place your child into the ground. There is no sentence that makes that natural.

It was neither poetic nor peaceful.
It was violence dressed in white linen and quiet sobs, and it ripped the axis of my life into shreds.

Lang’ata Cemetery. A place where the city pretends the dead can rest while the living break apart quietly. I remember the tiny graves that surrounded us. Rows upon rows of small plots, short lives marked by even shorter stones. Some fresh. Some forgotten. Some barely named.

That patch of earth has seen too many children lowered into it. Too many mothers left behind clutching air.

My son was laid down among them. A small box. A quiet burial. A world-ending.

I remember a seedling planted beside him - something about afforestation, or to root the moment, to pretend that life could still grow from a place so consumed by death. That seedling is a tall tree now. Towering. Unapologetic. It drinks from sorrow and keeps reaching for the sun, something I haven’t quite figured out how to do.

The gravestone is now lopsided. Time has no mercy, even for markers of the dead. The name etched into it has weathered under rain and heat, and I’ve watched it fade like I’m being dared to forget. But I won’t. I can’t.

That day, when the final prayers were said and the last handfuls of soil were tossed into the grave, people began to leave. Quietly. Respectfully. They walked away with kind eyes and damp handkerchiefs, making space for my grief as if it were something that could be contained.

And then it got loud.

My mind, loud with questions.
My bosom, empty of weight that used to kick and giggle and breathe.
My heart, gorged out of my chest like an animal sacrifice.

There was no soundtrack for that moment. No slow violin or swelling gospel. Just a ringing silence so sharp it felt like screaming.

I stood there long after everyone else left. That’s something people never tell you: the grief begins after the crowd leaves. After the chairs are stacked. After the final condolence is whispered. That’s when the real burial begins: the burial of routine, of normalcy, of the woman I was before my child became memory.

I didn’t want to leave. Walking away felt like betrayal. Like turning my back on the person who ever knew what my heartbeat sounded like from the inside.

And yet, I did. With knees that barely held me and a soul that didn’t follow.

Then came my brother - Tintin.

Gone in a flash. A headache. I'd be damned. A darn headache, they said. Like life hadn’t already taken enough. Like grief hadn’t already eaten through my walls.

He had a house in progress. Bricks stacked like hopes. A blueprint soaked in dreams. He wanted a place for his boys - a space where he could cook for them, raise them loud and free and proud.

Now that house stands like a question.

The earth took him too. Without warning or apology.

Grief doesn’t get lighter. Your legs get stronger.

You walk with it. You parent with it. You celebrate birthdays with ghosts standing behind the cake. You smile with teeth clenched because you’re tired of crying in public.

They don’t tell you that grief changes your language. That suddenly words like “joy” feel too small, and “forever” feels like a curse.

They don’t tell you that every new love feels dangerous - like giving the earth one more thing to steal.

And they damn sure don’t tell you how many versions of yourself you’ll bury alongside the ones you love.

I keep going.

I show up. I speak their names. I keep the dreams alive. I picture Tintin’s boys and imagine them finishing that house. I hear my mother in my tone when I tell someone I love them. I see my son in every child’s smile and choose, against all odds, not to look away.

Sometime back I sat under that mango tree - the one that holds my brother. The same tree that fed us all along, whose fruit once stained our shirts and made us laugh. Now it grows over his grave. It shades his dreams. It witnesses our pain and our persistence.

And I think: maybe this is what survival looks like.

Maybe it’s not moving on. Maybe it’s moving with.

With the ghosts, the unfinished sentences, the ache and the love all tangled up.

The earth has taken much from me. But it hasn’t taken everything.

For Tintin - On Your Death Anniversary

A second year without you, brother. Another 365 chances to wish it wasn’t real.

I woke up to dreams, standing in front of your house again today. It’s still unfinished, but so were you. So were your dreams. So were our plans. You were supposed to stay. You were supposed to see your boys grow. You were supposed to become old and annoying and laugh at your own dad jokes.

But the earth had other plans. And all we could do was bury another piece of our hearts.

Yet even in your absence, you remain everywhere.
In the mango tree’s shade. In the steel bones of your house. In the faces of your sons. In the stories that keep you alive - stubborn, loud, dreaming.

You left too soon. But you didn’t leave empty. You left us with love. With laughter. With memories.

So today, I don’t just mourn you.
I remember you.
I carry you.
I whisper your name into the wind and hope it reaches you.

Tintin, I miss you. 

Happy birthday in advance, my brother.
Happy anniversary in grief, and in love, and in fire that refuses to go out.

You are unfinished, but never forgotten. Not for one damn second.