The Day Truth Bled Through the Umbilical Cord: A Son’s Love Letter in a Tongue That Hurts Before It Heals

 

By: Isaac Christopher Lubogo, a Ugandan lawyer and lecturer

 

There are days when a son becomes a storm.

And there are days when a mother becomes a mirror.

This is the day when both collided.

 

That day wasn’t written in any calendar, but the earth remembers it.

The wind paused.

The birds held their chorus.

Even the ancestors leaned in — to hear the sound of a truth that had waited too long.

 

My esteemed brother, whom we shall call Omulamogi, was summoned by the only queen whose reign he could never overthrow — his mother.

 

She sat on a reed mat woven with the sweat of many years, her voice now cracked like old firewood, but her spirit still burning with maternal entitlement.

 

“My son,” she asked, “why do you hide your children from me? Why do my grandchildren never come to greet their jajja?”

 

She spoke like every African mother who believes her womb is an eternal passport into her children’s lives.

 

“They are mine too,” she added, “I have the right to see them. Or have you buried me before I die?”

 

Omulamogi did not speak at first.

He stared.

Into her eyes.

Through her ribs.

Past her grief.

He dug until he found a place deep inside where love was choking on silence.

 

And then, he opened his mouth.

But what came out was not disrespect.

It was not bitterness.

It was not rebellion.

 

It was truth—naked, trembling, wounded truth.

 

> “Mama,” he said, “I long to bring them. I do. But every time I come home, there is a new man. A new stranger who sits in the chair of my late father. A different ‘jajja mwami’ every time. My children keep asking me — who is this? What happened to the last one? Why does jajja have different husbands?”

 

 

 

> “Mama, I can explain death. I can explain heaven. I can even explain poverty. But I cannot explain why a grandmother’s bed has no memory. I cannot teach them that love changes hats every harvest season. That jajja is a revolving name in different men’s mouths.”

 

 

 

There it was.

 

The kind of truth that does not knock — it breaks the door.

The kind that does not slap — it disembowels.

And his mother?

She said nothing.

She stood.

She walked away.

 

And for eight months, silence became the language between them.

Eight moons passed like widows pacing in the dark.

Eight months of stubborn love bruised by unbearable honesty.

 

But on the ninth moon — something shifted.

 

She called.

This time not as a queen, but as a woman who had buried her pride.

Not with entitlement, but with trembling joy.

 

When her son arrived, she didn’t walk.

She ran.

 

That old woman — with knees that had argued with arthritis — ran.

Like a girl who had been forgiven by God.

 

She hugged him like she was holding the last page of her life.

She sat him down, and her voice trembled like a confession on judgment day.

 

> “My son… the day you told me that truth, I swore never to forgive you. But as days became nights and nights became mirrors, I saw myself. I saw the woman I had become. Not jajja. Not mother. But wanderer. And I wept.”

 

> “I have tested three times for HIV — not once, not twice, but thrice. Each time, I knelt in fear, asking God to spare me a second chance. And He did. I am negative, my son. Not just in body… but now in spirit.”

 

She took his hands in hers — hands that had once beaten him, fed him, cursed him, and prayed for him — and said:

 

> “I have given up men. I have given up the hunger to fill my loneliness with strangers. I choose now to be the jajja they will remember with pride — not shame. Let me grow old in honor. Let me die clean. Let me leave a name that your daughters can whisper with dignity.”

 

Dear reader…

Do you feel that?

 

That is not just a mother speaking.

That is a womb repenting.

That is a matriarch resurrecting herself from the ruins of her choices.

That is a son loving his mother enough to hurt her — so that healing could finally begin.

 

This is not just a story.

This is a sermon with no preacher.

A miracle with no pulpit.

A moment where truth did not divide — it rebuilt.

 

Sometimes, what your parents need is not protection — but confrontation.

Not flattery — but clarity.

Because love that never corrects is not love.

It is cowardice dressed in obedience.

 

So to every Omulamogi out there:

Speak.

Even if your voice shakes.

Even if your truth wounds.

Speak — because sometimes, salvation wears the face of a son who refuses to lie.

 

And to every mother hiding her scars behind her title:

You are not too old to change.

You are not too lost to return.

You are not too wounded to be remembered with honor.

 

As for jajja… she is now at peace.

She died not as a lover of many men, but as a mother of one truth-speaking son.

 

And that, my friend…

is the gospel of blood, love, and redemption.