Dear Shaheen,
Twenty-five years ago today, you died. You were involved in a car accident and now you’re probably a box of bones in that overgrown cemetery. I wonder if your headstone has been cleaned, the grass around your grave cut. The truth is, I still remember the smell of the hot earth around your grave. It was distinctively orange and dusty.
I have started to think about you more over the last year my brother; about what it would be like if you were still here - how much my girls would love you, Uncle Shaheen. I think about what you’d be doing, how you would have made it as an actor and be starring in those good British drama’s I often tell Lisa we should watch more of. I think about how you’d be living in London and how fortnightly on a Saturday you’d make the trip down to the coast to sit by the sea and just be with us.
I think about how much time you’d spend with my girls and how Isla would proudly tell her friends that her uncle was famous. I think about you picking Isabelle up and putting her on your shoulders to be lookout on a long walk as she shouts, “Uncle Shaff!”
Shaheen, I think about how proud you’d be of me when you’d say, “makorokoto!” and dance around me. I think about you coming into the home we’ve built and having a go on the trampoline, even though you’d be over 50.
I think about your family. About how you’d bring your kids over and all the kids would be running round playing while we have a braai and talk about the old days, and the future - what show you’re going to be in next, how Dixon used to say “seventy”. I think about us laughing into the night over dinner and a beer.
And then, as the years go by I think about you moving down to the coast with your family, London is too fast paced for you now. And sitting by the sea when our kids are grown. Having a beer at the local pub and talking about life. I think about you buying a house in the posh part of Seaford (where people pronounce it “SeaFORD”) and us being close to one another, and us seeing one another and talking and laughing and exchanging advice for years.
I think about you coming to Isla’s wedding. And Isabelle’s. And watching them raise families of their own with me.
I think about you falling ill when you’re an old man. The doctors say the only thing they can do is make you comfortable. But that’s ok - you’ve lived a full life, you’ve spent time with the people you love and who love you. Enough time.
Enough time.
I think about you dying. Dying at a ripe old age. And Isla is there, and Isabelle and Lisa. Your family are there, your kids, your wife, your friends, everyone you love and who loves you. It’s ok, you’ve spent enough time with us, you’ve lived a full life.
And then Shaheen, I think about you dying at 26 in that mangled wreck. And I think about Isla, Isabelle and Lisa never having the chance to meet you. And I smile. Because you packed so much into those 26 years that you may as well have moved down to the coast, carried Isabelle on your shoulders and died at a ripe old age.
I love you, my brother.
