Johannesburg - I know a man who evaporated like a drop of water into the air. He melted into the shadows, his figure became as indistinct as a whisper in the wind.
There was a fire involved in his disappearance too, but it wasn’t a brazen prison escape with a dead body burnt in his cell as a decoy.
His name is Simon, and when he heard his name called twice, he took his body and went on his journey back to God, almost taking our memories of him along too.
This is the story of how my brother caused collective amnesia in my entire family.
To this day, none of us, my uncles and aunts, cousins and siblings, can remember the year and the date of Simon’s funeral, but we were all there.
I suppose my brother wanted to be alone in his death, as he was in his life.
Products of broken homes crumble into peculiar pieces when we shatter.
None of us can remember where his grave is located, we just have a rough estimate that his funeral was a few years before or around 2010 and that he is buried at Azaadville cemetery.
My brother was the first-born son. He and my older sister stayed behind with our mother in Limpopo. And I, with our father in Soweto after my parents separated around 1990.
Simon used to say he would come to visit.
I hardly saw him my entire life, give or take at a few family gatherings; a wedding here, and a funeral there. I always believed him when he said he would come to our father’s house in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg. We moved from Soweto in 2001.
He did come. He carried his own body to his father’s doorstep, where he always longed to be. But now, in a coffin, what a bitter-sweet manner to fulfil a promise.
Almost a decade after our estimate of his passing, my father followed in 2017.
It was only then that I remembered the mystery of my brother’s demise.
When I got a tombstone for my father, I wanted to get one for Simon too.
But Simon said no! I was told the cemetery offices had been vandalised and burned down years prior. They had no records of burials from a few years before or around 2010.
My brother Simon is a ghost. In a desperate bid to conceal his form, his flesh and bones are hidden from sight in a secret tomb shrouded in the night.
We almost forgot his existence. He was robbed and stabbed in the heart in Hillbrow about 15 years ago. He had a yearning to bask in the love of his father and keep his promise to his little brother.
Eager to soothe our pain, after satisfying his yearning and fulfilling his promise, he cast an amnesia spell at his last breath and concealed his body after death.
He disappeared like a wisp of smoke in the night, a dream that fades at dawn.