Zoleka Mandela Shares Heartbreaking Details Of Her Last Days With Ma Winnie! It’s been a few months since the passing of Ma Winnie Madikizela Mandela and her granddaughter has had a tough time coming to terms with her death.
Zoleka and her grandmother were very close and inseparable. For the first time since Ma Winnie’s death, Zoleka has shared how she feels knowing she has to live without her grandma.
Taking to Instagram, Zoleka shared a heartbreaking message on her last days with her grandma. “I have the memories of the last few days constantly streaming through my mind. You’ve said more to me in your visits, their dreams but I wish you had said something to me on Friday when we attended your last Good Friday service together,” she wrote.
Zoleka opened up about the guilt she carries for not having been strong enough for her grandma to tell her she was dying.
“I know I can’t bring myself to pray but with each day that passes, I wish I struggle less with why you left without saying goodbye and with staying up all night so scared and angry about having to live the rest of my life not knowing why you chose not to tell any of us that you were dying,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I’m falling apart at just the thought that you must have felt so alone at that time if you did, I’m crying because you didn’t have to keep your dying a secret from any of us. If you needed me to be stronger for you to tell me that you only had a few more days, I know I wasn’t and I’m truly sorry. I have so much guilt.”
Read the full message below.
I have the memories of the last few days constantly streaming through my mind. You’ve said more to me in your visits, their dreams but I wish you had said something to me on Friday when we attended your last Good Friday service together, do you remember how pensive you were during the church service and how I kept checking if you were okay, you were’t sleeping through the entire service as you had started doing? You were always so tired and in pain. I wish I spent the night again when you asked me to that Saturday because you would have woken me up in the early hours of the morning when you felt the tightness in your chest. Ma, I only left because you always want us to talk until the early hours of the morning when we have our sleepovers in your bed and I needed you to rest because you had started feeling sick. I wish you had said something to me when we were alone in your bedroom on Sunday, those moments when I helped you get ready for hospital or when I packed your bag just before we left? I held your hand the entire time we drove to hospital, all you did each time I squeezed your hand was look up and smile but no words. I don’t know if you knew that I was waiting outside for you the entire time, you would have hated the thought of me sitting on some chair outside your ward and crying my eyes out and not on the blue lazy boy right next to your hospital bed like I always did? Why did you wait until I left the hospital to go home and change, for you to take your last dying breath without me? Is it because I always fell apart when you got sick or when you were in pain that I never gave you the chance to be weak so I could be strong for you for a change? I’m sorry, Ma. I’m falling apart at just the thought that you must have felt so alone at that time if you did, I’m crying because you didn’t have to keep your dying a secret from any of us. If you needed me to be stronger for you to tell me that you only had a few more days, I know I wasn’t and I’m truly sorry. I have so much guilt. Please know that when these words I write you and those I say to you are not enough because you don’t always respond to me, I want and have always wanted to be everything for you.
