Living with the Sick | Memories we Lost

 Drawing examples from Mqombothi’s story, Memories We Lost, write a composition to show that when we live with the sick we need to show them love and compassion.

 Introduction

Those who are sick in our midst require compassion for them to recover. This is the case in the story Memories We Lost.

ILLUSTRATIONS

S (i) The narrator’s sister is attacked while playing near hot porridge. She hurls the pot which misses the narrator’s face but lands on the chest. She is pain and strips off her clothes. When the sister comes to she sympathizes with what happened to her sister. The narrator lies to her that she had poured hot water on herself. This is to save her the agony she would have felt if she learned she had caused the sister that much pain.

 S (ii) The narrator’s sister is attacked in the classroom. She throws desks and breaks windows and everybody runs away scared of her. But the narrator stands in front of her and looks at her straight in the face. She scans the environment, recognizes her sister and “returns’. Whereas everybody flees from her, the narrator remains.

 S (iii)After the classroom incident, the narrator drops out of school so as to be with her sick sister. The sister begs her to return to school but she declines. She argues that she wants to be in the same class with her sister. When they remain at home they spend time together talking their own language. She discovers that her sick sister is good at drawing sketches.

 S (iv) When the narrator returns to school, she listens to the teacher talking about Schizophrenia as a disease without cure. But she feels her sister deserves to feel something. At home they throw away the drugs and when they did so the sister began to recognize herself. The two girls begin to communicate without words.

 S (v) After the bizarre ritual that was conducted to appease the ancestors and with it cure the girl, the two girls sleep together lying in the same position. Her sister sunk her teeth deep into the pillow so as not to cry.

 S (vi) On the night when the narrator’s sister was attacked by this ‘thing’, the villagers are all up. They form themselves into two groups each with a self-appointed leader and head into the darkness in search of one of them who had disappeared. They dared the terrain and darkness. Even though they return without the sick one, they are relived when the mother comes with her the following day.

 S (vii) The narrator overhears Mother and Smelly Foot talking conspiratorially to take the sick sister to a Nkunzi, the man who baked people with cow dung and those he baked never survived. The narrator feels that her sick sister should not go through that. In the night they leave with sister. She lies that they are going to visit an aunt. She holds her sister’s hands tightly as they walk in the dark.

 S (viii) On their way to hospital the narrator keeps the Nkunzi story away from her sister. She hopes that she would get to tell her that she has a mental disorder of sorts that make her not differentiate fiction from reality. She heaves a sigh of relief when she sees a hospital in the morning. They tighten their grip on each other’s hands.

 S (ix) the narrator’s sister is seized by the attack making her hit her head on the wall severally leaving bloodstains on the wall that lasts for a long time. The sister holds her tightly to try and restrain her.

 Conclusion

Whenever we show love and care to the sick around us they feel relieved and recover quickly.