MHM Magazine

It was a Sunday late afternoon, almost time for supper! It's time to have a better closure to the weekend and start planning for my new week. I was 33 years old, a vibrant young adult, dedicated to my work as a manager in the aviation industry, family-oriented, enjoying the daily radiant light of my eight-year-old daughter, surely nothing out of the ordinary could happen, why would it be? I am doing everything “right”, and we attended the morning church service. My partner is a businessman, and the business is flourishing, a new home, new cars, a new life without financial challenges. In that moment of bling blinded by external achievement, my inner world was about to crash; I didn't know death had already entered my home. I received a call from my partner at 17H00, “Darling, I’m coming home early today, start setting the table for supper, I’m on my way. Excitedly I started setting up the table and planning conversations for the night. The second call came around 17:45 from his cell phone. When I answered, I was puzzled hearing a strange voice on the other side. The person started by taking a deep breath, then said, "Hello, I dialled this number because it was the last number dialled. Urgently come to this address…." I heard nothing! My jaw dropped! Who was that? And why were they using my partner's cell phone? I went silent. He spoke again. "Can you hear me?" Come now, there is blood all over! Denial became my friend from that moment. I called my daughter to come with me, while shaking and stuttering, I struggled to start my car and tried to explain where we were going. We arrived at the scene, a mob of people surrounded a man lying down, and I sauntered closer with my daughter holding tight to my hand. The next was a screaming woman, saying she brought a child! And there he was, lying down, blood gushing out of his body, running down the road. He was helpless, and with his last breath, he was asking, “Where are they”? He took eight bullets from a carjacking that went wrong, and they took his life. He died as I walked closer and I didn’t know where my daughter was until later. When the paramedic came and declared him dead I thought can anyone wake me up from this horror dream? Can I escape it and come back when everything is real again? Denial screaming inside my core, I felt like my heart had stopped beating. My reality was suddenly turned upside down; I lost the future that made me wake up each day and see life as meaningful. In anger, I labelled every man a killer, I hated the world, and every person looking at me was a suspect! Everything we worked hard for no longer mattered. In anger, I took firearm handling lessons because of fear, and the legal system that failed me and my child. I stopped eating, lost weight and bought clothes from the children’s section. I consulted medical doctors every second week, with physical and mental challenges, unable to process the trauma I’d witnessed and was living within me. I carried the shame of being labelled a widow everywhere I went, ashamed of financial institutions calling to collect debts that I couldn’t afford anymore, red letters of demand from my children's school and my in-laws' insensitivity to the situation made me feel like life is not worth living, nor will I ever have the capacity to cope as a single parent. Not only did I lose a partner, but because I was overwhelmed by grief, I also stopped seeing my daughter’s presence; it felt like everyone I counted on was slowly vanishing. My daughter had to witness me experiencing waves of emotions daily. I dragged myself to try to sleep every night because the horror movies would play, sleep deprivation became normal and safe, yet detrimental to my well- being, as it slowly deteriorated. Bargaining began; maybe I FROM LOSS, GRIEF TO AWAKENING: LIVING WITH... MHM | 2025 | Volume 12 | Issue 5 | Living With MHM By Masulumane Petunia Sandawana Issue 5 | 2025 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | 33 MHM