Kinks and Quirks - Part 2 (The End to my father chapter)

Apparently “Mr M” (Mthembu) died this morning…If you haven’t read my last blog post, Mthembu was my biological father. We had a complicated relationship after finding out he was my real dad at 18 years’ old, after having grieved for my “fake” dad who had died a few years prior. (If you're confused, you're in good company).

Ever feel like your life is a movie being watched by that invisible audience you hear in sitcoms? Heck, I need a drink… (screw you Bheki Cele and Coronavirus). Now I must write down my emotions and deal with them instead of drinking them away…lol

I’ve been angry at Mthembu for years, for a lot of reasons…and now just like that, the object of my prolonged anger just vanished. And I’m left here, sitting with a pile of useless emotions, unanswered questions, words unsaid, wounds unhealed…

Life is so weird, isn’t it? How you can hate someone and desperately want them to love you all at the same time. How we act nonchalant in front of them while you silently drown in a sea of unrealized hopes and dreams for what could’ve been. In this time while I process my own catastrophic emotions towards my father’s death, my heart breaks for my sister Ceboh, his daughter, who knew him her whole life.

I envied her for years…she got to be raised by him, protected by him, provided for by him and maybe got the occasional “I love you” from him. Things a daughter supposedly needs from her father, her first hero, her first encounter with male love. Personally, I’ve also come to believe that the way a girl experiences love (or lack thereof) from her father radically affects how she relates to most males in her life…exhibit A, yours truly.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve both feared and desperately longed for male attention and affection, maybe to fill the void left by all my absent “fathers”. Every time I got into a relationship, I would sabotage things (both consciously and unconsciously) and always “reject him before he rejects me” as soon as things were going too well. As I’ve mentioned many times before; the constant lie in my head is, “if my own FATHERS never wanted me, why would anyone else?” So, drama has been the common thread in all my romantic involvements (there’s always a dramatic exit); if it lacks drama, I get bored and leave either way.

I think my defense mechanism is “leaving” or “quitting”. Basically, I’m a “runner” (lol). I’ve repeated this destructive pattern in relationships, friendships, my studies, jobs; any commitment scares the heck out of me, and I’ve left a trail of broken hearts, disappointed friends and family and many lost opportunities. But something’s got to give, at some point I need to decide to stop running and see things through. To show up fully and give it my all while being patient with the process. I’m slowly trying to make this change in my life. Please pray for me and for many others like me.

Back to Ceboh, my sister, with whom I shared our whirlwind of a father figure. I struggled to build a relationship with her when the truth came out all those years ago. She resembled everything I grew up yearning for, she had the love and attention of our father, she had had the “normal” childhood I’d always wanted but could never have. I couldn’t be further from the truth apparently and I regret making her pay for our father's sins.

After years of rejecting her attempts at building a relationship with me, I slowly started warming up to her. She would later reveal to me what a turbulent relationship she actually had with “her dad”, as I often referred to him. He was apparently human; messed up like the rest of us; far from the knight in shining armour that I expected to come and save me from my disastrous life. Their relationship worsened as she grew up; I hope she finds her healing. I think he was bitter and unhappy with his life and took it out on those closest to him, so in essence I dodged a bullet but tell that to my stubborn heart.

The man left behind many broken hearts, including those of his wife and children. We must all pick up the pieces and decide to forgive him, not because he deserved it, but for our own peace of mind and sanity. And let go of the apologies we still hoped for, the validation and affirmations we still desired, the happy memories unbuilt. He was human, just like us; broken, disappointed and lost.

When I first met him, I was enamoured with this man (my then Uncle Mthembu) before I encountered him as my faulty father. He was a very charismatic, people’s person who seemed to have an enviable life. He was a school principal by day, a choral music genius and composer by night who won many accolades and had the opportunity to travel the world and perform before great audiences with his choir. I even saw him on TV many times. Yet with all that success, he didn’t escape his brokenness and his life ended in shambles.

But I choose to look at the bright side. After ten odd years of some futile on and off engagements at building a relationship, we finally got to spend quality time together where we weren’t fighting about the past. Unfortunately, this somewhat reconciliation took place after he was transferred to a hospital in Durban for kidney failure last year. I put aside my anger and pride and visited him in ICU as often as I could, bringing him books and snacks and an open heart. We started some kind of a connection as his life drew to a tragic end.

He never fully recovered from the kidney issues coupled with other common health deteriorations. In the past few weeks he’s called me a few times just “checking on me”. He probably knew the end was near. I choose to hold onto that small glimpse of beauty we shared in that hospital ward and those last promising phone calls. Death is a funny thing, you can never get used to it.

I’m still in shock about his passing, at some point it will hit me like a ton of bricks, I don’t know when, but it most certainly will happen. But the human spirit is resilient, it can endure and rise up stronger than ever, no matter how hard life knocks it down. And out of our ashes, always comes beauty.

Our faults and shortcomings mixed with all our greatness is what makes us human; in a remarkably twisted way this fusion adds unique and profound texture and colour to the canvas of our souls.

My father had his own kinks and quirks in showing his love for me, and I choose to take the good with the bad. May his soul rest in eternal peace. 

My Mthembu brothers.