Johannesburg - My grandmother has masterfully conquered selective memory. It keeps her alive.
The hallways of her memory palace are always immaculate.
I suppose it is her well-trained trick of the trade - she was a nurse for decades.
Or it is simply a naturally acquired defensive mechanism that death aids.
The powers of her mind are admirable.
With ease she resets her faculties to factory settings someway; a game she has played with Papa, her late husband of over 70 years who died at 99-years-old three weeks ago. Mma caved in when survival mode was activated.
But she didn't collapse into herself or implode; how I dread the moment she snaps out of it and comes to terms with the death of her soulmate, realising that it is not all in her mind - it is not what she may believe.
I suppose when you have been in sync with another being for so many seasons that came to pass, the truth becomes what you make-believe.
She believes Papa went to the hospital without her knowledge. She believes it was merely a routine check-up and he should be back by now.
But she only momentarily remembers this when she is told.
As quickly as this detrimental information reaches her, it leaves. It must be daunting and disconcerting for a 96-year-old.
Papa and Mma had collective amnesia, but they never forgot one another. Their minds, locked and synchronized in a realm of their own, are now split, broken down to selective amnesia.
I cower at the day Mma breaks down. I fear she may be fragile once she cracks out of her cocoon of mental safety - a butterfly effect of the age-old game she has played with Papa - a complex system of eternal love and inevitable despair; a whirlwind of endearment, devotion and chaos.
“Where is this man?” she periodically asks my uncle, their last-born child of three who is in his 60s.
She is both soft and well-spoken, hardly minces her words.
She is precise in her movements. Her voice is a song of praise. She smiles like the sun shines. When her eyes meet with yours you can't help but feel plentiful and very wholesome. Not only can you hear the softness of her voice, but you can also see it on her face, painted beneath the lineage on her wrinkles. You would think she has not lived through the darkest of our reality in how she packs light in the bags under her gentle eyes.
And her eager anxiety to lay them on her lover, whom she has not begun mourning. I am uneasy about her anxious eyes and how when she finally opens them, she too may realise that when reality sinks in, it can drown your soul.
Mma’s world could come tumbling down when the void, the emptiness seeps in and gravity halts, debris levitates and soils the immaculate hallways of her memory palace.
My grandmother has masterfully conquered selective memory. She is kept alive by not remembering that her husband has died.