The Architecture of Presence: A tribute to my most favourite person

We often speak of love as if it is a debt to be settled in an eulogy, a grand sum of appreciation gathered only after the account of a life has been closed. We wait for the silence of death to find our loudest voices. But love, in its truest and most transformative form, is not a retrospective; it is rather, an active, breathing architecture built in the mundane moments of the present.

Three weeks ago, my world lost its light. The medical records simply blamed liver cancer. To the world, she was a statistic or a name on a program. To me, she was Chocolate, my Auntie Herty. My Sister Adoley —the woman who didn’t just give me a roof, but gave me a self. As I navigate the hollow ache of these past nineteen days, I find myself anchored by a singular, comforting truth: she knew. She didn’t have to guess, she didn’t have to wonder, and she certainly didn’t have to wait for a casket to feel the weight of my love and devotion to her. SHE KNEW IT. SHE ALWAYS DID.

My Shelter in the Storm

My journey to Aunt Herty’s doorstep was paved with the cold stones of rejection. She was always my friend from my infancy. My mum left me with her always and I followed her everywhere she went whenever we went to Larteh on holidays. It was no secret – they called her my second mum. They called me her daughter. She called me her friend. Her Suzzy. Her Akua Suzzy.

Later in life, the fallout of my parents’ divorce wasn’t just a legal separation; it was a structural collapse of my belonging. My father remarried, and in that new union, there was no room for the ghosts of his past—specifically his children, and most pointedly, me. My stepmother’s ultimatum was a silent wall I couldn’t climb, and my father chose the new wall over his own blood, sadly.

Simultaneously, my mother, a woman whose heart had been hardened by her own battles, viewed me not as a daughter to be shielded, but as an inconvenience to be managed. Her harshness was a constant, a rhythmic maltreatment that always made me feel like a guest in my own skin who had overstayed their welcome. She was rebuilding her life, and in her blueprint, there was no space for me.

Then there was Aunt Herty.

She didn’t take me in out of a begrudging sense of “family duty.” She took me in with a ferocity of spirit that suggested she had been waiting for me all along. She became my best friend, my confidante, and the primary architect of my healing. In a world that had told me I was “too much” or “not enough,” she told me I was exactly right. She prayed for me and chatted with me always about everything.

She helped me establish my business – Rosario Klassics and was there when I first opened my very first shop. She has always been instrumental in stocking my shop and run errands for me to support and to help me. She was always there.

Loving in the “Now”

The central tragedy of human connection is our tendency to save our best flowers for the funeral. We hoard our “I love yous” as if they are a finite resource, rationing them until the person is no longer there to hear them. I made a conscious choice early on that Aunt Herty would never be starved for affection. I loved her dearly and I know she loved me too.

Loving someone while they are present means more than just saying the words; it means witnessing them. It is the act of seeing their fatigue and asking them what they want to eat for dinner and making sure it’s sorted out. It is the long phone calls just to hear their laughter, the celebration of their small wins, tell them about your new experiences, struggles, latest trips, and the physical presence during their quietest hours.

With Aunt Herty, love was a daily practice. We shared secrets over meals and built a sanctuary where the harshness of my mother and the neglect of my father couldn’t reach. Because I showed her she was cherished every single day, her transition—though devastating—is not haunted by the ghost of “I wish I had told her.”

“The regret of the living is often just the delayed recognition of a value we were too busy to notice.”

I noticed her. I saw her worth when she was healthy, and I saw it when the cancer began to steal her strength. I didn’t know that was what was happening at the time but I definitely knew something was off. And so I probed till I got help from my doctor friends who started to explaining what started to break my heart. The knowledge of my best friend going through such a difficult situation broke me and I feared losing her yet stayed strong for her.

Loving her in the present meant that when the end came, there were no secrets left between our hearts even though I wished she had told me the intensity of the pain when she was going through it. I understand she probably didn’t want me to worry since I was far away but I wished she had opened up a bit more towards the end….

The Cruelty of the “Insiders”

In the wake of her passing, the masks have fallen, revealing an ugliness that is as heartbreaking as the loss itself. The same people who seemed like ghosts during her life have suddenly materialized, not to honour her, but to claim a territory they never cultivated or one where they feel I never had a right to be part of.

These individuals, who barely visited and only reached out to my Chocolate often when they wanted to take from her, have now branded me an “outsider.” In the middle of my deepest mourning, they had the cruelty to say that they only ever “tolerated” me because of Aunt Herty. They told me I am not “one of them,” as if blood is a more valid currency than the years of care, the shared tears, and the genuine friendship I offered their aunt while they were busy making her their nanny, ignoring her need for a friend and simply living their flashy lives.

The betrayal, however, did not stop at the extended family. My own mother, seeing me at my lowest, chose to sharpen her tongue rather than offer a hand. Instead of providing the maternal comfort I never had, she mocked my exclusion. She looked at my grief and my isolation and told me she hoped I would suffer now that the person I cared about the most is gone and her family has shown me my place despite the relationship between us…

It is a bitter irony: the people who claim the title of “family” are the ones acting with the most malice, while the woman who actually treated me as family is the one about to be put in the ground. They are obsessed with the aesthetics of the send-off—probably planning a flashy, expensive funeral that serves as a stage for their performative grief. They might want the world to see them as loving relatives, even as they step over the person who actually loved them the most, to do it.

Why go “all out” for a body that can no longer feel the silk of the lining, when you couldn’t be bothered to bring a single rose or a moment of your time when she could actually smell the flowers?

This is the uncomfortable reality of human nature. We use funerals to ease our own guilt. A flashy funeral is often an expensive apology for a lifetime of neglect. It is easier to write a check for a headstone than it is to show up for a random Sunday afternoon chat. They call me an outsider because my presence is a reminder of their absence. My closeness to Aunt Herty during her life highlights their distance. By pushing me aside, they are probably seeking to attempt to rewrite the narrative so they can be the protagonists of her story.

But they cannot take away the truth. They can have their flashy funeral and their “insider” status, but they will never have the memory of the look in Aunt Herty’s eyes whenever I walked out of a cab or out of my car into her shop or into her room. They will never have that luxury of her hearty laughter that filled a room even when it was on a phone call. They will never experience that joy of ownership over my phone when I was with her when she’d ask for me to unlock the phone so she watched my pictures to fill herself in on all I have been up to since I’ve been away. Answering all the questions of « where’s this? What happened here? Who’s this? » etc etc

They will never have the peace of knowing they were there when it mattered.

The Comfort of No Regrets

So while they argue over guest lists and social standing, I find my peace in the memory of our quiet and loud days. I am comforted by the fact that Aunt Herty died knowing she was the center of my world.

There is a profound emptiness in my life now nonetheless. The silence where her voice used to be is deafening. Our regular Friday nights and after school night long calls, me calling her back after missing her calls….But that emptiness isn’t filled with the “what ifs” that plague some people. I don’t have to perform my grief to prove its validity. My grief is deep because my love was active.

If there is a lesson to be gleaned from the life and death of Aunt Herty, it is this: Do not wait for the end to begin. We live in a culture that romanticizes “the beloved departed,” but we often fail to romanticize the person sitting across from us at the breakfast table. We assume there will always be a “later.” We assume that our appreciation is implied. But love is not an implication; it is an application.

Conclusion: The Legacy of a Full Heart

As I prepare to say my final goodbye in my heart, I am not interested in the flash or the performance. My tribute to Aunt Herty was paid in installments over the years I spent by her side. It was paid in the laughter we shared, the prayers I prayed over her illness, and the unwavering loyalty I showed her when the rest of the world was too busy to care.

Aunt Herty taught me that the greatest gift you can give a person is the certainty that they are loved. Because I gave her that certainty, I can stand in the middle of this difficult time—even with the insults of “others” ringing in my ears and the mockery of my mother weighing on my spirit—with a clear conscience.

Humans may be fickle, and others may be cruel, but love—real, present, “in-the-moment” love—is the only thing that survives the fire. Aunt Herty is gone, but the love I poured into her while she was here has nowhere to go; it stays with me, a shimmering reminder that I did right by her. And in the end, that is the only thing that truly matters.

Love them now. Tell them now. Show them now. For when the silence comes, the only thing that will comfort you is the memory of how loudly you loved them while they could still hear you.

My heart breaks because I miss her warmth, her conversations, her laughter and everything in between and my heart aches but I know she’s in a much better place, free from all the pain, illnesses, hypocrisies and all the stress of life…

Always with love…

A heartbroken Rosario…