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Rest in peace Madiba

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It finally happened, the day we have all been dreading for a very long time happened and our dear beloved Tata Madiba passed away at home last night.  

I woke up to this horrible news this morning and was immediately faced with a conversation surrounding death and Madiba with my five year old Liam.  To simplify matters, I explained that Madiba was the grandfather of our beautiful country and explained that he was very old and sick and at the ripe old age of 95, is now living with Jesus.

Liam was fine with this and even went on to give me a hug to stop me from crying and then told me that I will be alive when he is a daddy, but when he is a grandfather, I too will live with Jesus.

I then got questions relating to whether or not Jesus lives in a house?  If the house looks like ours and all sorts of practicalities relating to death and living with Jesus.  And I tried my utmost to deal with this in the best possible way.
My local radio station went all out making me cry even harder, playing the best rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah that I have ever heard, by Karen Zoid. 

All in all this is just the saddest of days filled with clichés.  Madiba was a father to the nation, to the world, humble, humility, leader, inspiration, and every other word known to man.

For me, despite not having actually known Madiba, it feels as if a little part of me died today, the bit called hope, there was always hope in a world where Madiba lived and loved and taught.  There was always hope of a better tomorrow for all.  Madiba was inspirational for a number of reasons, one of the key reasons for me was the fact that he valued women, in modern society that is still a scarce characteristic, to this day, there is gender based discrimination at almost every company in this country.

So rest in peace Madiba, we will miss you every day, you have given the world so much and it feels as if the only thing left to do is to carry on with this legacy of yours.

x

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