On Death, Grief and Time’s Relentless March — For Symon Kenny
By: Solomon King
Tags: Death, Grief And Loss, Grief

“Tonight, a comedian died in New York. Somebody knows why… somebody knows.” — Rorschach, Watchmen.

This week, an hourglass broke in Kampala. And the sands of time that filled this hourglass with life, love, hope and a search for purpose were spilt open, cast to the winds. It was not yet time and the hourglass still had many, many years left in it.

My dear, dear friend, whom I had known for more than 13 years and worked with for close to a decade was violently and mercilessly… removed from this tapestry of life.

A friend who was the geekiest of geeks and whose mind was — quite honestly — a marvel to behold. We spent many hours debating the most random of things, but almost always gravitating towards games, movies, comic books and exploring the fringes of philosophy, existentialism, stoicism and logic. Obviously, we didn’t sit around special rooms or tables pontificating about virtue and ego while slaves fanned away at our pompous selves. But we sat around bar-tables, computer screens, white-boards, video game consoles, balconies and the occasional swimming pool — he was a master swimmer, and I was a clueless goat in water. And we pontificated about virtue and ego and everything in between.

“I feel as if the world has opened up like a book. With blank pages and a brush in my hand, I can now paint a picture for those unable to capture moments as they happen.” — Symon Kenny

Our conversations were almost always riddled with logic and absent of “feels”, as he liked to call them. We talked about many things matter-of-factly and anyone who knew him knew that his mind worked with blinding clarity, with an encyclopaedic memory and an almost absolute fetish for logic and reason.

Which is why we talked a lot about death and its inevitability in the light of our very existence. And how we each have different ways of processing death. Him and I most often gravitated towards immediate acceptance of the inevitability, not with the irreverent dismissal of the grief that comes with pain and loss, but with the understanding that… it happens.

Memento mori. Valar morghulis. Amor fati.

He knew I had a weird relationship with death, and I had told him, many times, that I made my peace with death a very, very long time ago, and he shared a similar sense of calm. He wasn’t one for vulnerability, but allow me to share one of those moments in my life that laid the foundation for that acceptance.

***

I sat on a bed in a school dormitory, drinking a cup of black, sugarless tea. I was a little, skinny and ultra-shy thirteen-year-old boy who mostly kept to himself and spent more time inside his head than outside it.

It was a normal school day and it was break-tea time. All the students were in their dormitories, or classrooms, cracking jokes, shouting and generally making the most of the brief moment of respite from the daily drudgery of boarding school life.

A fellow student barged into the dorm and made his way towards me. He was visibly excited and I perked up, too, eager to hear whatever the newcomer had to say.

“Solomon,” the student said, breathless, “your father is at the headmaster’s office and wants to see you.”

I slowly put down my cup of tea and stood up. I was worried.

My father was a tough disciplinarian whose idea of love — to me at least — was paying my school fees, feeding me and giving me a place to stay. If he was at school outside of the designated school visiting day, either I had done something wrong or something was wrong back at home.

I got to the headmaster’s office, still deeply pensive and saw my father seated. His face was grim. We said the customary hellos and he asked how I was doing and I mumbled something back. All I wanted at that moment was to go back to my dorm and finish my cup of tea. I did not want any of whatever he was here for.

As always, my father didn’t speak to me much. We got into a car I had never seen before and we drove in silence for a couple of hours until we reached an apartment complex I had never been to before.

We climbed a flight of stairs and reached a door. I remember the colour of the door — blue — but I can’t remember if it was actually blue or whether my mind was desperately clawing for peace.

My father knocked on the door and then, turning to me, calmly said “You have to be strong. Your mother has died.”

***

“Physician, I have a condition

the world seems a little slow in its motion

My heart doesn’t seem to beat of its own volition

And yet here I am, with this unusual notion

That the pace of my heart and the pace of the world should be in unison.” — Symon Kenny

From the moment we are born, we live our lives knowing that we will die, eventually. We hope for long and fruitful lives that are filled with purpose and passion and we plan and build and grow and love and fall through the sands of time, creating memories and experiences and wondrous, unbelievably complex life-journeys knowing well that each day we wake up is another day the sands run a little less.

I like to joke that the biggest cause of death is life. That living is 100% fatal.

See, death comes to us in the most unexpected of ways. And in much the same way that we are aware of our own clocks running out, every single person we know also has a clock that’s ticking, and no two clocks are the same.

Time marches relentlessly on and while time is the same for all of us, time is also different for all of us.

Some sands run smoothly, almost flawlessly, with maybe a few brittle pebbles in the way; these are lives lived in peace and harmony with the world, where mostly good things happen and the hourglass is clear, predictable, and most importantly, long-lived. And then some sands run a little coarser, rougher, filled with good things and beautiful moments, but also with strife and struggle and ending — far before their time — in ways that are… heartbreaking.

There is death that breaks peace. There’s death that brings rage and heartbreak and takes time to process because of the how and the why. I have built a foundation of stoicism and acceptance through the many years (and through the many more difficult deaths) since my mother’s own passing, but… my friend’s death has been a difficult one to come to terms with.

And it’s going to take a very, very long time to accept.

“Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Rest in peace, Symon Kenny. We are with you, always and you will always be with us.