I am an orphan.

That is a very sombre way to start but it forms the basis of the story I’m about to tell so hold onto your tears. I promise the rest of my story will not be as daunting.

I remember back in primary school, when they used to run those data collection tests to find out where students lived and whether or not they lived with both their parents, a single parent or a guardian and so on – you get the gist. They asked these questions in that exact order and if you fell into the category you would raise your hand and they would put down the number for each. As this happened, the sample space of leaners to fall into each category decreased so by the time they got to the last category, the students who had not raised their hands obviously fell into that section. It was weird how the teacher’s voices would change when they asked that question because they assumed orphans are fragile.

There was always two of us left, me and a girl named Tsakani. She used to live in a family home just up the road from our school. Every time we received pitying looks and apologies for things we did not understand, we would just hug each other. Have you ever been in that situation? Where you feel the pressure to respond a certain way because of the environment. Social psychology terms this response as conformity, it felt like the right thing to do in that moment was to cry, but I didn’t want to cry – weirdest thing to make a prepubescent kid feel.

Anyway, it was always just me and Tsakani up until high school. In high school they ran this test once. I was in grade 9 and the people who had known by that time were really shocked to find out that I was an orphan. ‘You don’t look like an orphan.”, they would say. Uhm, excuse me? What is an orphan supposed to look like? See that’s the thing with our world. Too many things are stigmatised when they shouldn’t be. But I admit I see why, many of the people I have met who still have the luxury of one parent act like the world owes them something. They act out, they pity themselves – basically they are angry at the world for making them parent-less, haha, see what I did there? I mean I had a very short phase in my life too where it felt like I was destined for the worst because of that but how could I miss the most prominent figure in my life. My mother, father and granny all in one (and everything else in between).

Florence Nonkosamadlamini “Mme Dudu” Molefe. I think she has a lot more names than that, by the way. This woman has been the forefront of literally everything in my life, my growth and development, my education, my expensive branded clothing and latest devices. Some people said I was spoilt but I know I was always reasonable with her. I was on the verge of failing a module last semester and I was crying as I was studying, I couldn’t even concentrate. I called her, she was stuck in the Eastern Cape because of the lockdown. She told me to stop crying and said that will only get in the way. She said I had never failed anything in my life and that I was not about to start now. Then she said, even if I did – I can always try again next year. I passed that module by the way.

I define my success through having to make her last years on earth the most comfortable she has ever been. I want to build her a house, I want to buy her expensive things (because she likes things, just like me. PS. She’d kill me if she saw this!) and I’d take her around the world. I need to make her feel what she has made me feel for the past 20 years of my life.

Now, I may have lost my parents but it’s really hard to miss something you don’t remember having – it’s just a blank space in the trajectory that is my life. My dad died a month before my birth and my mom died two years later. But when my granny dies, you see now that will shake my world and I am not looking forward to it. She is the reason I am who I am today, I don’t know what I’d be without her.