Before Death Had a Name:
My Childhood Experience
By Deborah Atanchi
One Day One Mother
In the province where I grew up, death was something that happened in distant stories,
never in our small circle of mud-brick houses and mango trees. We believed, without
ever speaking it aloud, that we would live forever.
My world was painted in the colors I loved most: the grey of morning mist rolling over
the river where we swam, the purple of dawn when we began our long walk to school,
and the white of clouds that drifted lazily above us as we ran barefoot through the fields.
The whole village raised us. Mamie Evelyn Koffe would call me for lunch even when I
was playing three houses away. Auntie Benedicte taught all the children to swim in the
river, holding us steady until we found our courage. We walked miles together to school,
our voices rising in songs that made the distance shorter, our laughter echoing across
the farms to the Kosala Quarter to attend our school, which was called Fence school in Fiango Kumba.
We ate what the earth gave us: sweet potatoes, yams we helped dig, greens we
plucked without question, and corn we roasted over open fires. No one told us about
nutrition or toxins. We simply ate, and we thrived. There was no television to tell us the
The world was dangerous. We learned from the sky, the soil, and the stories of our elders.
I remember pulling fresh leaves from the garden and eating them right there, dirt still
clinging to the edges, the bitter-sweet taste of something alive filling my mouth. We
drank from the river. We played until our bodies ached with happy exhaustion. And
every night, we tell stories, especially when there is a full moon outside, and we go to
sleep believing tomorrow will come, and the day after that, and forever after that.
It wasn’t until I was much older that death introduced itself to me.
First were my grandmother, my nephew, my mother Juliana, my sister Rose, and then other family
members and neighbors. And the most profound was my beloved daughter Cynthia,
and following up was my father, Romanus. When it finally came, I realized something
profound: those years when I believed in forever weren’t a lie. They were the truest
thing I’d ever known.
Because the joy we felt was eternal. The love that wrapped around us like the purple
dawn, that never dies. The community that held us, the river that taught us courage, the
earth that fed us, these things remain, woven into who we became.
To every mother whose heart knows the unbearable weight of loss, I offer this truth from
my childhood: the happiness your child knew was real. Those moments when they
believed in forever, when they laughed without worry, when they felt safe and loved,
those moments are eternal. They exist outside of time, in a place where death cannot reach.
Your love painted their world in colors that will never fade. And in the grey mist of
morning grief, the purple dawn of remembering, and the white light of peace that will
one day come, you will find them again, not gone, but transformed into something that
lives forever in the soil of your heart.
We do not lose what we love deeply. It becomes part of the eternal landscape of who
we are.
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For grieving mothers: May you find comfort in knowing that every moment of joy you
gave your child a seed planted forever.