Tony Mochama: Soccer chats I miss to have with my brother

Dear Benjy,

Today, April 29th, would have been your birthday.

But then you passed away that August night now three years, eight months, and two weeks ago, and I miss you much and so much has happened since you've been gone it would be hard to fill you in.

So let me just give you the biggest news only – that you got your first nephew, a cute baby boy called Leo Drago Drogba Mawira ( I do not know if he is a bouncing baby boy because I have not tried to bounce him and test his rate of buoyancy, yet)

This happy occasion happened a couple of weeks ago, shortly after your old team Manchester United had beaten my team Chelsea FC two/zero at the Old Trafford stadium. I have no doubt if you were still here with us, Benjy, we would have watched that game together.

We spent a lot of weekends watching soccer pamoja in our time together here on earth, didn't we?

And there was something of an omen, a harbinger, when it came to you and Man U beating teams two to nil. In 2011 when that happened (to Chelsea), it was the day in May that Chelsea, your niece, arrived.

When in 2007 you left that pub in Ngong and almost got killed by a hit-and-run driver and had to spend a month in hospital, it was after watching a game in which Manchester United beat Fulham two/nil.

And it was the same score line against Wigan on that dark Sunday night of 2013. Two/zero.

Shortly after the final whistle, I got the call (from that lovely lady doctor, Dr. Bassam or Dr. Bashan who had been attending to you in hospital) who whispered those dreaded words that no loved one ever wants to hear: 'I'm sorry. He is no longer with us ...'

And that, in the end, is what it all comes down to, isn't it?

That someone you grew up with in the same household, the one you gave your 'hand me down' clothes to, and send around, and protected in school, and spoke world history with, and introduced to fiery spirits in plastic sachets, lol, and wept with when MJ died (because he was so-ooo both your childhood sound track) and sneaked in when just seventeen into Carnivore ( by passing your newly acquired ID card through the fence) just so you could comically groove to Will Smith's 'Getting Jiggy With It' on the dance floor – that that person, you brother, are no longer with us. And never will be, again.

This, I have come to discover in time, is the greatest and cruelest trick Time has on its hands.

That it gives us this precious gift called time, time not enough to be with our loved ones – but it gives us the illusion that we have all the time in the world to be with them – then one day the curtain comes down ('no longer with us') and too late you come to realize that you will never meet again, not in this (and if an unbeliever any other) lifetime. That you have been separated for all Eternity.

And all you are left with are the good memories and stories, if you are lucky – but also a lot of time, regrets. My biggest regret is that we never got to do that 'just the two of us' brother trip with Benjy to Munich – or even Mumias. Because, in Europe (which England isn't) his team was Bayern Munich.

On this day, April 29, 2013, Benjy called me from Nairobi at the exact moment I was in a museum of negritti (negroes) in Italy and I had to step outside into the light drizzle of Venice by April.

After the 'usual' happy birthdays (he was coughing badly on phone) I said on a whim, suddenly filled with a melancholic sadness: 'Next year, Benjy, I'll take you to Munich.' I was whimsically serious.

'Next year in Anchorage!' Benjy joked.

Anchorage in Alaska, we'd both worked it out earlier that year, is the farthest place you can go on the planet from the city of Nairobi.

And that was Benjy's last birthday.

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