My beloved mother
At Mount Harmony Memorial Garden Cemetery in the USA buried my mother, Cecilia Gathegu Chege. She visited her children and grandchildren in the US and asked her to pack minimal clothing because there were enough for her. She didn’t believe me, and instead of carrying clothes in a suitcase and disappointing me, she wore eleven dresses. When I showed her the dresses I got for her, she joked, “Now God has given me numerous dresses, I will be changing three times a day to compensate for the days I wore the blanket.” She loved visiting the US, and she even confessed that her heart was at peace for the first time. She talked about her uncle, who never came back to Kenya after fighting WWI, and she started looking for him whenever she visited. However, this gradually stopped.
I had extended my mother’s visit because of her health problems when she suddenly died on December 30, 2004, at 10:30 pm. She was 89 years old. However, one of her nephews, her eldest sister’s second son, insisted that she was 92 years old. My mother’s gravesite is under several tree shade and next to a quiet lake on leveled ground. Our last-born brother, Daniel Kariuki Chege, laid on the left side of her.