| Sports |
A victim of
circumstances?
Laments the plight of a mother who ‘loses’ her son to the vices of
a harsh city life. Writes JACK METTA
MARY tried to keep a calm composure
but deep inside she was weeping bitterly.
She was looking past her child to the days when they were a
close-knit family, undisturbed by the vices of this present world.
It was so vivid – the joy felt by the mother for her child, the
attachment that nurtures and strengthens a bond of love as the
child slowly grew with time.
She had often led her imagination wonder into the realms of the
unknown while holding her child and picturing him as a handsome
young man with the world at his feet.
And she wasn’t modest about revelries either. Isn’t it every
mother’s dream and hope that her child would grow up to be
somebody – someone they could look up to for their needs should
that need necessitate.
A lose tear slips from the corner of her eye and she instinctively
brushes at it, her eyes stinging with the salty fluid. She
squinted to clear her vision but the first tear seemed to have
opened the floodgates for before she knew it, a wail came bubbling
out from her innermost recesses and she was bending and weeping
like a baby, her hand grasping the hem of her meri-blouse over her
face as her tears flowed copiously. She felt as if she was weeping
for all the mothers whom fate had dealt cruel blows.
It just did not seem fair at all that the time, effort, resources
and love she had showered on her youngest son would never be
returned in kind.
John went away last Monday. There were no tears; just an angry
expression that had outlived any semblance of peace and love he
had held in his heart, if indeed, he held any.
There was no thought of the 16 years of his life spent under the
umbrella of a family’s love and companionship. The fond memories
he held of his times were slowly erased over the past five years
until last Monday, when all trace of that connection was deleted
completely from his memory and replaced by a violent attitude.
John is now fighting demons in his mind and those demons are in
the shape and form of those who want to care for him.
The doctors were blunt – he had to go away for specialist care and
hopefully recuperation but the latter was simply a hope.
They had confided in Mary and her husband that John had “four
holes” in his brain which virtually meant he would most likely
evolve into a vegetable in the short term.
Mary was fearfully struck with the realisation that she had lost
her ‘baby’. Death would have a blessing for he would have passed
onto another realm and taken the worries of the world and the
family’s with him.
To be confined to an institution virtually meant he was a ‘walking
dead’ and the parental obligations and the burdens of this world
would continue to be imposed on all of them.
And they were finding it hard enough trying to eke a living in the
city.
For the past five weeks they were in hospital, John had not been
himself, but then again, he really hasn’t been himself for quite
some time.
A couple of years ago, Mary had noticed a change in John’s
behaviour. He would come home late at night as if in a drunken
stupor and eat his dinner with relish, while talking and laughing
to himself.
He would rebuke her or his siblings and father, who engaged him in
a hope of an intelligent conversation.
Occasionally and then more frequently of late, those rebukes
became violent and most of the family’s material possessions
including portions of their house were now in tatters.
The neighbours are still talking of the tantrums that John had
been throwing but they were not hesitant to acknowledge the powers
that be for the presence of John’s elder brother and father, who
had been combining their resources to succumb the youngest member
of their family.
John was always seen in the company of four or five others in the
neighbourhood.
Their leader, a fatherless youth, seems to be a hardened street
kid, living off the generosity of his relatives and good citizens
of their community.
He also had the reputation of taking drugs; marijuana being the
stuff he was commonly associated with.
Word had it that whatever money his widowed mother or
generous-hearted relatives and friends gave him, he would spend on
the drugs and sell it back to the youths in his gang.
In short, he was the ‘pusher’ and John and company, the clients.
They were on a good thing, John was once heard saying, amid his
tantrums.
Nobody in the house cared anymore for him and that was why he was
spending time with his friends and having fun, he’d said.
The “having fun” had more connotations than the words at face
value.
Those familiar with the sight of young men huddling under the
shady trees on the beach would not hesitate to reel off the “fun”
bits.
It meant smoking grass, drinking home-made brew, smoking Spear,
telling stories or planning trysts with local ‘loose’ women,
fighting among themselves, raiding the neighbour’s gardens and
coconut palms, and, discussing how they would get their next fix,
among others.
Basically, familiar observers surmise, their version of fun is
basically doing ‘nothing’ or ‘getting high with nowhere to go’. An
old man in the neighbourhood once remarked: “That’s what they’re
good for, those good for nothing so-and-sos!”
You guess the negative attitude and the miserable lifestyle that
many of our young people are subjected to in the city is a deep
hole that many of them can’t creep out of.
As much as they are victims of circumstances, one asks if they are
to blame for what they are.
John left school after Grade 3 because he just fell into the hole
that the system perhaps had dug for him.
His father was a seasonal carpenter, getting odd jobs when there
was a building boom or his friends took him to work because they
needed an extra carpenter.
Paying school fees for three children was always a challenge and
when John fell victim to peer group pressures, his father simply
couldn’t care less whether his son went to school or not.
He had been at the end of his tethers, and, perhaps that may have
something to do with the direction that his son took because we
are forever told, that ‘discipline starts at home’.
By and by, the father just gave up on paying the boy’s school
fees, the boy became a home scholar and joined the other home
scholars and did what they did best – nothing.
By and by, the consumption of drugs, home-brew and smokes took
their toll.
John became emaciated, lost weight, lost his appetite and
frequently got sick.
His attitude changed and he became aggressive and violent and
about five weeks ago, he fell off a PMV bus. The incident landed
him in hospital and a resultant brain scan revealed something more
than physical external and internal injuries.
After weeks of observation, John was finally recommended for
confinement to a mental institution.
He left last Monday.
Mary will be having bad dreams. She is sure of that.
It had already started, she admitted.
Last Tuesday morning when she woke up in bed, the first thing she
did was look across the room to see if her three children were in
bed.
John’s absence stuck out like a sore thumb.
She had broken down and wept then.
She wills the latest events to go away like a bad dream and
wishing very hard that the clock would be turned back and the
family reverts back to the unity of the old days.
She wants to wake up, look across the room and see all her
children sleeping peacefully with nary a care to the world.
Alas, it is not meant to be but this is exactly what she wants to
screen off from her mind. She yearns to keep her family together
but deep inside, she is starting to feel a little guilty that she
had not been able to provide the best for them.
The more she thought about her situation, the clearer the sound of
the Wise Counsellor’s words reverberated in her inner ear:
“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it …”
 
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