Julie Marita Kebati’s grief over her father, former Kenya Power engineer Bosco Kebati, is not a grief that began at his graveside.
A video she recorded roughly three months before his death has resurfaced online, capturing a daughter who had already spent years mourning a man who was still alive.
Wound Opened Long Before Death
According to her, Bosco stepped away from her life and the lives of her brothers for close to 28 years after establishing a second family.
She and her siblings grew up in the village in Kisii, largely without their father’s presence or protection.
“My dad is alive but he has never been there. He never fought for me. I am losing my brothers,” she said in the clip, words that have taken on a heavier meaning now that Bosco is gone.
The pain she described was not simply about physical distance but about what his absence communicated: that he had chosen not to fight for his children from his first family.
2 Daughters, One Complicated Legacy
His death has now made that separation permanent, leaving Julie to grieve both the father she never fully had and the one she has now lost for good.
Bosco’s passing has drawn his two families into public conflict rather than shared mourning, one that spilt onto social media.
Linda Kebati, his daughter from his second family, came forward during the burial period to say that her family had been shut out of key parts of the funeral arrangements.
She described being denied the chance to properly say goodbye to her father, alleging that relatives from Bosco’s other family had excluded them.
A relative from the first family responded by presenting a contrasting account, claiming that Bosco’s first wife had cared for him throughout his illness and that the family had quietly carried that burden.
Those claims have not been independently verified.
What has emerged is a portrait of two daughters mourning the same man from entirely different emotional vantage points.
Julie’s grief is rooted in years she says passed without the father she needed, while Linda’s pain is tied to what she believes was a denied farewell.
Both accounts point to relationships with Bosco that were complicated long before his final days, and his death has done less to heal those complications than to bring them into sharp public view.
The resurfaced video of Julie is a reminder that the wounds now playing out in the open did not begin with his passing.
For her, the loss had already been lived, quietly and privately, for the better part of her life.
