On 07 June 2022, my brother KF Mahape died from an asthma attack. That’s the medical report. But what I carry with me is a deeper, more spiritual understanding. My brother didn’t just die from asthma. He died from silence. From the weight of a truth he couldn’t speak. From a lifetime of being the ‘good one’ in a family that didn’t know how to hold his light.
Freddy, as we called him, was selfless. Gentle. Kind. The kind of man who would wake up early to make sure everyone else was okay, even if he wasn’t. A man who gave so much that he forgot himself. Some would call him saintly. But that kind of goodness comes with a cost in dysfunctional systems. It makes you vulnerable to guilt. To manipulation. To being the emotional sponge for others.
And that’s what Freddy was. The emotional sponge. The bridge. The quiet balm between tensions. He didn’t fight back. He absorbed. Until his chest could no longer hold it.
During his funeral, MM Mahape said something like, “We were never close, but we grew closer in the final months because of something in the family.” That something was conflict. And that conflict had my name on it.
In 2022, I made a conscious decision to set boundaries—between myself and my mother, and Moabi. I saw the manipulation. The emotional blackmail. The generational wounds playing out again and again. I stepped away. I told Freddy with respect, “Please don’t carry this for me. They are using you to reach me. I’ve chosen my peace.” But he couldn’t choose his. He was too loyal. Too tied to his identity as the family caretaker.
This year, my sister-in-law shared something that keeps ringing in my ears. She said Freddy sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, shaken. Either in trauma or amazement. And one night, he said, “Moabi are o tlo bolaya Abueng.”
That line struck deep.
Because by 2023, I had already died. Not physically, but spiritually. I had crossed over from the person who tolerated abuse to the person who stands firm in truth. From the peacemaker to the truth-speaker. That version of Abueng—the one who swallowed feelings to avoid conflict—was dead. And in his place was someone who no longer negotiates with guilt.
But Freddy couldn’t cross with me. His love was his rope.
I believe his asthma attack was his body crying out what his mouth could not. The fifth chakra—Vishuddha—the throat, the voice, the expression of truth, was blocked. For too long. He couldn’t say, “Enough.” He couldn’t say, “I’m tired.” He couldn’t say, “You’re hurting me.”
He was the only one in our family I could truly identify with. The only one who didn’t carry darkness. He had a clean heart, even if it was often too exposed.
He left money behind for his brothers. And in a cruel twist of irony, that same money was used to pay legal fees between those same brothers. Some of it also paid for my cannabis course at Cheeba Academy. He helped me pursue what I love, even in his absence. Even in his death, he gave.
This is the burden and the blessing of Freddy. A man whose light served everyone but himself.
So I write this not just as a mourning brother, but as a survivor of the same system that buried him. I speak because he couldn’t. I draw boundaries because he couldn’t. I say no where he said yes. I choose my breath, my voice, my truth—because I saw what happened to him.
There is nothing noble about being devoured by other people’s dysfunction. There is nothing spiritual about self-erasure.
To the ones who are praised for being the “good child,” be careful. Sometimes they’re clapping while you’re dying inside.
To the quiet sons.
To the good brothers.
To the emotional sponges.
To the ones who wake up gasping in the night.
To the ones who can’t breathe.
Speak.
Speak before your body gives out.
Speak before your silence becomes your illness.
Speak before the world praises you for being gentle, while you disappear inside yourself.
Freddy couldn’t. I can. And so I do.
This is for him. And this is for me.
- Abueng Mahape