I lost a Friend. Tribute to Aubrey 'BigBoy' Mlondobozi

We seldom meet people who make an indelible mark in our very lives that we realise after they have departed this world how big a gap they filled. As we grow up, we meet and designate titles to people we encounter. Some we are born into defined relationships with them, and as a result, nature defines them according to what they will always be, with or without our permission. These are our family and extended family; blood relations will determine and, to a great extent, even attempt to regulate how you should relate. As important as these are to our lives, we have not chosen them; they did not choose us, yet they are who or what they are in our lives. 

Those we do not choose, operate, and almost always, on a right and claim wavelength of relationship building and management. Sometimes, they have rights in our lives because of how nature defines them about us. Others have more than rights but claim to occupy specific spaces in our lives. I mean rights possessing and rightful claimants; both have a unique friendship and relationship with us. This relationship is, in almost all instances, usable and abusable. 

 

There are these other relationships which we create by choice. In a world of billions of people, we select from a broad sample to bring closer within our sacred and protected space. For those we choose for this space, we designate several titles that define them according to how they make our joy and happiness meaningful on Earth. They assume disposable titles like classmates, schoolmates, housemates, social club colleagues, work colleagues, Faith-based brethren, girlfriends (if blessed differently, they graduate into wives and husbands), alums-defined colleagues, comrades and compatriots, and many other titles. These have no borders but have boundaries and circles that are concentric with us as the centre.

 

There is this special group of people we meticulously choose. Our choice of these people can make or break us. We can become them or inherit the best and worst of who they are. We can be judged by our choices of and about. We can die for or because of the. We give this category or designation to a few people, which is very sacred: MY FRIEND and MY FRIENDS. This title is unfortunately only best known by the one that designates as they are the ones that will live the obligations, consequences, and responsibilities attached to such titling. It is the experience and experiences we have with those we choose to call friends that will define how far they can go in and about our lives. This is a privileged position as it gives us access even those with rights and claims bestowed by nature will not get. 

 

Our friends become the families we choose. They provide us with the extended space of joy and happiness our families can only wish to have with us. With them, we select our obligations. They access us through our minds first and then progress meticulously and with our tacit consent towards our hearts. Our families access us through our hearts and, through struggle, claw their way into our minds, a path very few succeed unless they seek to be friends too. In the words of Toni Morrison, 'True friends are those who are friends of our minds. They get to be called friends because they can gather us. The pieces that we always are; they must be able to gather them and give them back to us in all the right order. It is always good to know when you have a person who is a (perfect) friend of your mind'. This Aubrey was!

 

Dare I say; in Big Boy, I had one such man amongst a strictly selected few who was in many ways a friend to those select and unique dimensions of my mind. There are pieces of me; if he were not there in my life, I cannot imagine how I would have had them gathered and brought to me in the order that he gave me. He is a friend who would be in spaces he was invited to and specifically hear what I could not be told directly. He would pick up his mandate and gather whatever pieces of me that were thrown around where he had been and, in his unique way, package them in an order I would gladly volunteer into the order he wanted. 

 

We did things because we were friends; we refused to do things we knew we couldn't do together to respect how we defined the dimension of friendship we wanted of each other. We agreed to be husbands to the women we called our wives, and because of that, we experimented with being neighbours who were friends. We chose where and how to be naughty together, and if our naughtiness interfered with the dimension of friendship we decided, we veered away from each other to allow our obligations to work as we unconsciously desired. We shared frustrations, sorrows, trials, and tribulations; in a way, only sitting together for a moment of silence was more healing than talking about what pains us; our famous dose was 'is kaak maar is alright, wena khethile khethile".

 

An extended family of friends person. He has friends who became friends because of him. There is a family that became family to his friends because he engineered it to be that way. He was a nodal point through which many relationships were built and sometimes consolidated to greater heights, with him as a distant common factor. He was the mathematical x many still need help to solve for its true value even if there is no algebraic or geometric imbalance to manage. He was a complete equation, factorised or otherwise. He had a heart that wished great things for others; he would go out of his way to connect you with threads that link you to the rest you need to be who he sees you could be. Yes, he gathered many. He would take his opportunity and pass it on to gather pieces of somebody into an order he saw. 

 

He was Malome Biggy to his nephews. In his own way, he would interrogate at the answer to their questions and make us as his network expandable to his nephews.

 

Even in sickness, he spent more time telling me how he planned to be a grandfather to 'vatukulu'. He was counselling on what his ailment was that you literally forgot he was the one that was sick. He refused to believe he was not well, simply because his body and not soul were troubled. 

 

Yes, he was in a 'situationship' we agreed, as this was in the dimension of what defined our friendship, to deal with post his ailments. However, representing what characterised our conversation, he lived to the vows I witnessed him say to his wife in Giyani as a man of vows. 'A nere strooi phela'. He promised, "to be a wedded husband, to have and to hold from that special day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and to it, he pledged faith." Like all of us, the pledge might have been challenged in many unique ways, and only he and his wife will account to God how they fared, but as a friend, I know that 'he exited as he vowed' for that RESPECT. 

 

He was a free soul who lived a mantra that "freeing yourself of anything or anybody is one thing, but claiming ownership of that freed self is another." He was a tier in my life, a tier I would visit to be in it as it represented a level few could just be. In a bar of friends that could calibrate my mood into templates I never imagined fitting, he was that special bottle I could overdose to be drunk in his presence. He was a millionth of what he was and could be. 

Thank you for reminding us that we are mortal beings. Yes, it is true that ours was a precious life together because yours, as it will be with all of us, has ended. As students of time, let us allow it to again take you, go into a posterity we all know it is there, pity it will be your mortal remains, which we will commit to dust that will remind us with an inscription "Here lies you my friend". 

When I wrote in my poetry book about a dear friend, he was one of very few who inspired me to say

 

A Dear Friend

 

My life is complete because I know you, 

My completeness is living by your side

My livelihood is rounded around your sanctuary 

My incompleteness is a result of your absence 

Our paths were ordered by the most high

Our meeting remains underpinned by righteousness 

Our spirits belong to the High most spirit

If souls can merge ours have passed the destination

 

Sorrows only serve to strengthen our resolve

Our resolve to stand by each other obliterates sadness 

In the midst of all tensions we can smile, and

In the midst of all joys we can be serious

For seriousness defines our togetherness 

Although minds are designed to churn out different views 

Ours have become companions without much agreement

Is it a question of great minds thinking alike, or?

Like mindedness surrounded by greatness

 

Fried and dried is the order of our friendship 

Sheep and goats share same kraals and enemies 

We share same destinies yet from different kraals

Families bond not by choice, we chose a familial bond 

Our secrets flow with the rivulets of our companionship 

Surreptitiousness defines the odour of our presence

Tears and sears lighten our environs;

Dear friend, dearest of them all, friend to my soul, 

Companion to my thoughts, bliss to my mind

Etlela hi ku rhula Xibodze, Munghana lonene. Till we meet again. Hakel'hoko!!!