My sister
My sister, a widow whose husband died in a road accident, was 30 years old when she went missing for several days. She had two children, a boy, and a girl. I kept praying and hoping that we found her alive, and a few days later, she was discovered in a hospital. I went to visit her and noticed bandages covered the right side of her lower abdomen. She had gotten an appendectomy. The following day I asked my brother to see her in hospital. On Sunday, my late husband, Rev. Jotham Gatungo Wandu, and I went to the hospital after church.
Many visitors came that Sunday, some visiting in the morning and others in the afternoon. Many people never got to see her as she was taken back into surgery after the wound became septic. When we visited her, we were told she was in surgery, and the doctor asked to talk to her family. I was eight months pregnant at the time, and my late husband was invited into the doctor’s room, and I sat in the waiting room. Less than an hour later, I was asked to join the others in the meeting. The doctor told us, “the patient is undergoing treatment, and “we are trying all we can to help her.” I realize that my sister had died since the doctor had left the surgical room to talk to the family. I told him that I was in the hospital to see her, and I wanted to see her body. It didn’t make sense that the surgeon talked to us while my sister was supposedly undergoing surgery. He told us that her body would be transferred to Kenyatta mortuary and that we could see her the following day. I told him that I was not leaving the hospital until I saw my sister’s body. He granted my request, but he expressed his reservations regarding the other people waiting to see her. He was afraid they would cause a disruption and disturb the other patients. My late husband, a pastor, promised to lead the people peaceably to where the body lay.
The body was kept on the second floor, and my husband quietly directed people toward the room the body was. I dragged myself up the stairs in the hope someone would support me; everyone walked past me. When we got to the room, many of the people thought that my sister was asleep. I uncovered and touched her face, noting that she was cold. There was cotton stuffed in her nostrils and mouth. Still, people did not realize she was dead. The late pastor told us to bow our heads in prayer and stated, “We loved her when she was living, and when she died, we loved her too.” The prayer continued and ended with the benediction-grace of our Lord-Amen.
The pastor asked us to leave the hospital quietly to avoid disturbing the other patients. My sister, Joyce, realized that our sister was dead when she heard the prayer. She ran out of the hospital’s devotion and ran toward the closed gate that hit her head hard. She calmly made it back to the room just as the prayer was coming to an end. She was grateful that she got hit by the gate because she could have run into a busy street and shot by a car. I thanked God for answering my prayer of giving back my sister and life, even though she later died. Her daughter made it to the doctor’s health field in the United States with a son that graduated from Emory University in Georgia. Her son is a father of two sons, one high school and one college this fall. They all live in Georgia. My sister was a significant influence in my life, and she found me a great tutor. I was able to get into Mary Leakey Girls Secondary School Nairobi, Kenya – the best high school.