"Khanyisile: The Light My Grandfather Couldn't See"

I'm still unsure if my grandfather ever truly loved me.

I'm the oldest grandchild in my family, born just a year before my cousin who was always seen as the who needed attention. She had health issues growing up, allergies, sensitivities - so naturally, she was doted on. But that attention quickly became favouritism, and with it, came the feeling of being invisible in my own family.

My grandfather was not a soft or warm man. In fact, he was physically and emationally abusive - not just to family, but even to the neighbours. He rarely worked and was often kept in Favor by his children who would buy him alcohol in exchange for his approval. That favouritism tickled down to us, the grandchildren.

He treated my father poorly. And because of that, my mother - strong and protective was never on good terms with him. She believed that feeding an unhealthy relationship through money and alcohol was a cycle she refused to be part it. My grandfather didn't take that well. He would still demand things from her and the rest of us.

And he was in charge of all of us, we were never allowed to go anyway, our lives were just based on school chores, girls were not allowed to wear pants no matter the age, never attended birthday parties, events that we knew were those help in our home, school trips were done in secretes. The first every wedding that I ever attended were for my parents and I was only 5years old,than 19yrs later I attended my own wedding. The first every Funeral we attended it when my uncle passed away in 1995 and that was his last-born son.

He had strange habits. My grandmother had to cook special meals for him- fried fish and meat only. He didn't care if there was food for anyone else. He would take half of the groceries to his room, and we would only get them back when his "favorite" grandchild was sent to ask.

Despite everything, he gave me my name Khanyisile - It means "the who brings light."

And yet... I never felt seen.

The only real conversations I had with him were when he was drunk. He would ask me strange questions like, "Would you be sad if I died?" or, "Do you know who gave you your name?" It was in those moments, through his slurred words. that I saw pieces of a man who might have once known love.

Everything about him was just missing puzzled. I felt sorry for my grandmother what I saw was a woman who feared a man that she should love, and who could have experienced that because all that I remember as a child and teenager was a man who would keep on shooting and screaming calling her by her surname, nothing sweet or prove or shown that she was a very kind, working hard wife to him and to all of us, In all that darkness she was the light of that troubled home but my grandfather didn't see that till he died and my grandmother was still covered by traumatic events that she continued feared him even in his death.

He died in 2003, quietly and peacefully in his bed - which was the biggest shock of all. Given his behaviour and how much pain he caused, we thought we'd be haunted by him. We thought he'd come back somehow- a ghost, a shadow, something as he uses to scare us and say if he dies, he will come back for all of us.

But nothing, No dreams, No whispers. Just peace

And maybe that was his way of giving back- silently, after all the noise he made in life.