I was young, a city boy with skinned knees and a picky tongue, exiled to her village for two weeks while my parents sorted out a life I wasn’t meant to understand. She met me at the bus stop where the tarred road surrendered to the red soil.

At the time, I barely understood how life in the village could shape me. The thought of going from bright city lights to lamp lit houses felt like punishment. Yet there she was – her head wrapped in a doek that I can’t seem to remember the colour of, she always wore a doek – waiting with a broad smile that seemed to break through the dusty horizon.

Her name was Tete Mai Dadi, though I simply called her Tete. Her homestead sat at the foot of two mountains, a clutch of mud-walled huts, a bony mulberry tree, and chickens that scattered like gossip when she clapped her hands. By modern standards, Tete might have been labelled “poor.” She had no electricity, no running water, and only a small plot of land for her maize crop. She also had two children, but no husband. The village called her “too stubborn” for refusing marriages, “too wild” for outlasting men who tried to tame her. But her hut was never empty. Many women came for bitter tea and even sharper advice, drawn to her unwavering spirit and the quiet defiance that told them they, too, could survive on their own terms.

Yet Tete always seemed rich in a way most people didn’t understand, this i undestand now. She loved wholeheartedly, gave of herself without hesitation, and held an irrepressible joy that bubbled up at the slightest occasion. She took real pleasure in the little things, like a well-brewed cup of mahewu or the way her chickens rushed to gobble the maize husks she sprinkled on the ground.

She used to talk about a life beyond the dust and endless chores of the village, a life where big dreams could come true. In her playful, encouraging way, she’d say, “I know you are going to be an important man, my child, and when you do make it big, I just want you to buy me those Tommy shoes.” She winked. “And don’t you dare forget!”

I never did. But she never got to wear them.

Grief is a quiet thief. It steals the colour from everything. Many years later I’d sit in my room, staring at the accolades she’d never see, and hate myself for crying over shoes. They’re just shoes.

But they weren’t. They were the finish line she’d never cross, the proof I needed that I could keep a promise.

That’s the part that stings the most. She never saw me graduate, never danced in those prized Tommys around her yard. She didn’t even get to see me become the man she believed I could be. By the time she reached her late thirties—somewhere closer to forty—her life was cut short by an illness no one had expected to rob her so swiftly of her generous spirit. She’d barely had the chance to spread her wings.

How could she die, I still ask, when she didn’t even live?

In one sense, her life felt painfully truncated. She missed all the milestones that, in my younger days, I assumed we’d celebrate together

Yet in another sense, Tete lived more fully in those fleeting years than many do in a lifetime. She embraced each day with a gratitude and enthusiasm that seemed to spring from nowhere. The very last time I saw her alive was during that summer holiday I spent in the village. I don’t know what magic words she spoke to my parents, what promises she made that swayed them. In all my childhood memories, they never allowed sleepovers, let alone extended stays away from home. Yet somehow, my father ever cautious with his children, trusted his sister alone with this precious charge.

I distinctly remember her butchering a goat just for me because I couldn’t bear another plate of village boiled vegetables. That goat was probably worth a fortune to her, but she gave it up without hesitation. “Let my nephew enjoy his holiday,” she said with a laugh. “I want him to remember our village for more than just the dust and vegetables!”  That was Tete mai Dadi solving problems with the grand gestures of a queen, despite living in a kingdom of humble means.

Each day in her homestead began with the crackle of a small fire and the sweet scent of burning msasa wood. She’d be up before sunrise, pounding something for our breakfast. The rhythmic thud of the pestle was my morning alarm clock. I’d stumble out of bed, barefoot on the packed earthen floor, and find her in the courtyard, bright-eyed, ready to tease me about my city-boy habits. “Look at those skinny arms,” she’d say. “By the end of this holiday, you’ll be a strong village man!” At the time, I’d roll my eyes, but in hindsight, those memories mean the world to me.

We spent afternoons wandering the footpaths near the mountain. She’d show me plants with medicinal uses and spoke about our ancestors who once lived with a deep reverence for nature, taking only what they needed. “Want big things, my child,” she said, “but don’t forget the ground under your feet. That’s where you come from.”

She might not have had the chance to travel far beyond our region. She might not have owned fancy clothes or a bank account. But her hut was a sanctuary built from the substance of her character. She was the aunt my dad trusted with his children’s safety, the kind of person who’d slaughter her best goat for a fussy nephew, the woman who could stretch a small bag of mealie-meal into a meal for five if someone arrived unannounced. She offered refuge and kindness in a world that can be harsh, especially to women who dare to live on their own terms.

Years have passed since the day Mum told me she was gone. I’ve grown, finished school, and discovered that adulthood is a tangle of opportunities and challenges. I can now walk into a shop and buy a decent pair of shoes without worrying about the price. But each time I see a display of brand-new Bata Tommys, there’s a pang in my chest.

But perhaps I’ve been asking the wrong question all along. How could she die when she hadn’t lived? The truth is, in her brief years, Tete mai Dadi lived with an intensity that many never achieve in twice the time. She lived in every dream she dared to dream, in every sacrifice she made, in every seed of hope she planted in my young heart.

The promise of those Tommy shoes remains unfulfilled, but her greater gift, the permission to want things, to dream big, to love abundantly still lives on, as sturdy as the mountain her homestead rested upon. She was my first lesson in loss, yes, but more importantly, she was my first teacher in what it means to live with purpose, to love without reservation, and to believe in possibilities beyond the visible horizon.

Looking back now, as a man, I understand that the Tommy shoes were never really about the shoes. They were about her vision of my future, her investment in my dreams, her way of teaching me that it’s okay to want big things. While she may have been materially poor, she was rich in the currency that matters most—love, faith, and the ability to plant seeds of possibility in others’ hearts.

So yes, grief steals the colour from the world, and sometimes I still ache with the knowledge that she never got to see the things she believed I could achieve.

They say she died before she lived, but they didn’t know her like I did. My Tete mai Dadi lived lifetimes in the space between sunset and sunrise, in the moments between one heartbeat and the next. Scientists tell us that the most luminous stars burn through their fuel at rates far exceeding that of less massive stars, their magnificent light a trade-off for longevity. Tete mai Dadi was such a star burning intensely in a brief period, radiating enough love and light in her short years to outshine those who flickered dimly for decades. Her intensity couldn’t be contained by the ordinary constraints of time.

Her story wasn’t clipped, it was a wildfire, burning twice as hot in half the time. They measure her by years (41), by goats (6), by the cheap wooden coffin they lowered into Bikita’s red soil. But how do you quantify a woman who turned breath into a revolution? Who distilled lifetimes of love into two weeks, two words, two hands that reshaped a boy’s bones?

The truth is, she’s not gone. I guess she’s just wearing different shoes now, ones made of starlight, walking paths in my heart where death’s shadow cannot reach.