Loss set the Tone

My year began at the edge of something ancient and honest, the tallest waterfall in the world. Water thundered downward with a confidence I wished for myself. Up there, time felt different. Slower. As if the mountains were reminding me that life is not to be rushed, but to be lived deliberately.

Along the trail, I had a brief run-in with herdsmen who appreciated my broken SeSotho. Ntate Mosebenzi smiled and told me I could ask for one wish. Logic insists that herdsmen do not have genie powers. But mountains don’t trade in logic - they trade in belief, in mystery, in quiet truths whispered by wind and stone.

So I chose my words carefully. I didn’t ask for happiness. I asked for joy - eternal joy.

Happiness is a fleeting, external emotion from good events (like a new car), while joy is a deeper, internal, and lasting state of contentment, a choice that sustains you even amidst hardship, often linked to purpose or spirituality, not just circumstances.

Two weeks later, I bought a new car. It felt symbolic, like movement - a reward. I convinced myself the wish had arrived early. That the smell of new leather was joy finally parking itself in my life. Unfortunately my joy did not come with keys - hat was just happiness. Less than 24-hours later my world crumbled. Thw woman who raised me (paternal grandmother) passed away.

She never got to open the sunroof of my car, something we had been dreaming towards my whole life. A small dream, really, but ours. She raised me from when I was three weeks old. She is the only person who has ever loved me unconditionally. Without expectations, without needing me to become anything other than myself. Her love was shelter. Her passing rearranged my world without asking for permission.

On Monday, the 13th of January, we went to identify her body at the mortuary. Her eyes were still open. It felt like she was looking straight into mine - one last time. As if to say, ugogo ukhona nje, musa ukukhala. 

That week was unforgiving. There was no room to fall apart. No allowance for grief to take its time. Decisions had to be made. A funeral had to be planned. And she wasn’t there to soften the moment with, “Umntanami usemncane kabi, myekeni.”

What made it heavier was that life - or rather work, did not pause.

My job, demanding and relentless, would not allow time “to be.” On the Thursday before we went to fetch her body, I had to jump into a meeting. A meeting. While planning a funeral. While my heart was still trying to accept that the woman who shaped my entire existence was gone. I learned, very quickly, how to juggle loss and responsibility - even when my hands were trembling.

Saturday the 17th was the last time I touched her. She was beautiful. Her face peaceful. And somehow her warmth still lingered beneath her icy skin. Then life insisted on moving forward.

I had four weeks left before attempting Kilimanjaro.

On the 31st of January, I summited Mount Mafadi - the highest peak in South Africa. That trek is a story for another day, but even then I knew it was a mirror of my January. Heartbreak Hill. Judge’s Pass. Eight hours of walking, grief strapped to my back, legs burning, spirit stretched carpaccio thin  and still finding the strength to summit The Judge. Then waking up, surprisingly steady, to take on Mafadi, followed by the life-threatening reality of Lesley’s Pass. Two summits in 4 days.

By the end of that month, 2025 had already taught me its first lesson.

Life can get worse. Or it can get better. The difference is not luck. It is not timing. It is choice.

Joy, I learned, is not the absence of pain. It's presence despite it. It's continuing to walk when stopping feels justified. It is owning my time - choosing meaning over momentum, depth over distraction, becoming over simply surviving.