The viewing room of the morgue was cold and impersonal. The walls creamy white, the fluorescent lights still on and casting a glow, even though it was approaching midday. The smell of antiseptic was strong. Overhead, a white fan hummed. A row of white plastic chairs sat against the wall. Three people were seated on them. A woman dressed in a tailored black dress was flanked by two men. The older one, was stout with a head of grey hair. The scarf around his neck had a distinguished knot. A retired diplomat, perhaps. The woman held a bouquet of stiff stemmed flowers, wrapped in ribbons. She leaned on the older man’s arm, cutting the picture of a dutiful daughter. The other man was middle-aged, strapping, in jeans and polo shirt with expensive details. They looked respectable in their stoic grief and also out of place.

The woman ‘s name was Gladys. She received a phone call late in the afternoon, during a visit to her parents’ house with the children Jafari and Tahira.

A strange number. It was against her character to pick up numbers she did not recognise. She thanked God she did. A woman’s heavy voice came on,

“Are you mama Jafari…I know you don’t know me..Mimi ni Lavender…aki,I am so sorry I am calling you with very bad news?”

“Your husband!”

“What’s wrong with Wilson?”

“Wilson amefariki”

Her father heard a scream from the living room and thought she had been stabbed and sprinted. He could not recall ever seeing her weeping so openly. Her mother held her through the convulsions. When the children came, they started crying too, though no one had told them. They felt it. 

By the evening, the immediate family had made arrangements. Gladys, her father and her brother-in-law, Wilson’s younger brother, Tolbert would travel to Malindi to identify the body. Tolbert had worried about this outcome, that his older brother would die shamefully and leave them with the heavy responsibility of dealing with his mess.

They had arrived on the first flight from Nairobi via Mombasa to Malindi to claim the body of a lost and found husband.They had one priority, to transfer the body to Lee funeral home in Nairobi.

Gladys had last seen Wilson three months ago. The occasion was warm. Jafari’s birthday party. He really bonded with the kids. It felt like family again, too good to be true and then, he had to return to Malindi. She knew he was living with somebody, Lavender, Lavi, and they had been others. The scandal had already broken out. Things were said, friends lost. She was deeply hurt and had thought she had gotten over it, choosing forgiveness, for the sake of the children who still loved their father. Of all the scenarios she had painted, she had never imagined he would die and not like this.

A lean young man walked into the room, dressed in a light blue overalls and identified himself as the mortician and apologised for keeping them waiting. He prepared the family for the procedure, outlining the steps that had been taken to register the body, the possessions retained, the condition of the body, the accompanying medical report and the manner the body would be wheeled in and where they were to stand. 

As he disappeared behind the door, the calm atmosphere was shattered. A blast of blaring boda boda horns, shrill whistles and riotous wailing erupted from outside, followed by a group of men and women waving freshly cut twigs. Her father jerked upright, the diplomatic composure gone. “We’re under attack,” he announced in panic, confirming every security concern he’d voiced about coming to Malindi.

“Bloody hell! The locals are here?” said Tolbert, walking towards the open entrance to get a better view.

Four women burst into the room, just as the aluminum-plated trolley was wheeled in. They were wailing, draping themselves on the casket, pacing about in lamentation, completely disrupting the mortician’s rehearsed order of viewing.

‘Wilson! Wilson! What have you done! Wilson?”

“What are we going to do?”

“Wake up Wilson”.

“Where am I going to find  another gentleman?”

Gladys read the suspended look of disbelief on her father’s face as clearly as if he’d shouted,

“What on god’s earth is going on here?”

Tolbert blurted out what must have been his inner thoughts

“Who are these people? Is this a prank?”

The mortician seemed unmoved. He stood across from his assistant holding the bars of the trolley, unaffected by the commotion in the room. So the wailing continued and Gladys stared alongside the men, unable to summon a response to the overwhelming grief they were witnessing. At the double door entrance, a group of men in reflector jackets, whistles dangling from their necks, spectated.

Then Tolbert got impatient and confronted the mortician.

“Who are these people, what are they doing here? This is a private moment?”

That statement set one of the women off,

“And who are you?” she pointed at Tolbert

He thrust out his chest and threw his arms back, his designer polo shirt stretching tight across his shoulders.

“I am his brother and who are you?”

The mortician directed his attention and pleaded with Lavender to hold her tongue but she would not comply.

“So what? Ask her! Ask, who called her! I am the Lavender! Yes! The Lavender that called you yesterday”.

Gladys looked at her, and the woman’s face clicked into place like the final, frustrating piece of a puzzle she’d been trying to forget. 

This face had broken her marriage. 

She had found a picture on his phone and confronted him but he denied it.Then six months later, he accidentally forwarded messages meant for Lavender to her phone and she took a screen shot before he could delete them. He moved out the next weekend. 

Tolbert was still staring at her, expecting a denial and permission to turn on his rage. Instead Gladys just asked,

“So you are the Lavender?”

“I am the Lavender”

That only seemed to agitate Tolbert and he barked at the mortician,

“Can these people not give us room to mourn as his family”

“Can they just leave us alone with my brother?”

Lavender shot back,

“Where were you when he was dying? If I didn’t have a good heart, would I have taken him to hospital with my own money and brought him here?”

“I won’t be so sure until I see the autopsy report”

“How is this person talking?”

“Mr. Mortician, I think you should take charge and kick these people out, we need time to be with our brother”

Gladys could hear the voices getting heated but her mind was on the children. How was she going to explain this to them? The mortician’s tone changed.

“Please Mister. We do not use that kind of language here. Please, I don’t tell you how to do your job, let’s respect each other here, Please this is also my office”.

Then he turned to plead with Lavender, urging to calm her words and instructed that Wilson’s immediate family would view first, followed by Lavender and her group. Having regained control of his office, he gently opened the lid.

Gladys was overcome. The two men supported her to the chair and sat her down. Tolbert wrestled with the wrapper on a water bottle.

The wailing began again, the four women surrounding the coffin, each in dialogue with their Wilson. Gladys noticed that the mortician was not bothered by their melodrama.

Lavender’s long red nails stroked Wilson’s hair, her fingers running through it as if trying to stimulate every follicle. She talked to him in a singsong voice, singing a lullaby. This was the vulnerability Wilson had never shown her. Just his demons

Benta in the shimmering skirt, one size too small was leaning heavily on the casket. Thick-set and known as his drinking buddy. She was torn, a whimpering child. The toughness had left her body and surrendered to grief.

Rael’s eyes were red and teary, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. Her hand covered her mouth as she stared blankly. She was the one who used to be a dancer in a live band. The investigator found pictures on her Facebook profile of the wild fling in Mauritius. The age difference was a scandal but by this time, Wilson had stopped caring what people thought.

Grace fussed over his clothes, adjusting his tie while murmuring in a low tone. She was the most mysterious of them. The private investigator had discovered little on her. What she remembered was that she nursed Wilson when he first got sick and had fallen out with Lavender and he kept returning to his nurse in time of need. 

Gladys realised that this was a final goodbye. They were not faking emotion. They knew her husband of 12 years in ways she could not imagine. These were the arms that he ran to for refuge.

The mortician summoned the women and indicated that he needed to close the casket and return the body to storage. The women were reluctant to let go. As the trolley was wheeled away, someone had to peel off Lavender and Benta’s hands from its edge. Gladys was back on her feet watching Wilson’s body return to the storage room.

When Lavender turned around, she met Gladys’s eyes. 

Two women in different states of distress. 

Their worlds had clashed in such an inglorious encounter. 

Gladys recognised something familiar in her eyes. Lavender had seen his brokenness. She knew Wilson. She knew that man too, but he was also so many others. 

She held her gaze and asked: 

“What did he ask you to tell me”

P.S. This reflection on a wife’s loss is drawn from my meditations on death, grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of Reflections on the ones we lost, drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding understanding amidst loss.