You deserve another shot at life.
I got to know about my late sister only when I was thirteen. My parents had slipped the details into a marriage seminar they held, upon invitation, at a church which I followed them to. For that moment in the programme, there was an intense stillness in the church. I could see the soft stares of sympathy and feel the unspoken words of condolences reaching out to my parents. The silence in the room meant they understood their pain, that they recognised their ache. All I felt was shock. How were they able to keep this tragedy away from our everyday, existential narratives? Why no word about it? Apparently the older children knew, but they had simply moved on too, like nothing happened. Not until years later, after I saw my dad’s Masters project, read the dedication page and saw my late sister’s name, did I approach my mum. I wanted to know what really happened. With a wave of a deep sense of grief and loss, my mum narrated the story.
This was in the mid 80’s.
Mum was in the kitchen, cooking. She had also put a pot of water on fire, but this was outside. Unknown to her, her baby had walked out of the house to the backyard and poured the steaming water on her body. No whiff. No scream. No cry. Nothing. It was strange. How could a baby pour a hot water on her body and not scream? Minutes later, my mum walked out and saw her baby. She was flustered but managed to rush her to UCH. It was so bad that when the doctors attempted to treat her, the cloth she wore had meshed with her skin; in removing it, her skin was detached from her body too. She didn’t survive it. As she told me the story, with beards of tears clouding her eyes, she mentioned how my late sister was my dad’s favourite child. At two years old, she was destined for great things. She was very intelligent and beautiful. She was so self-assured and bold, making interventions that betrayed her very young age. But they weren’t going to grow up to be a witness to her evolving. Instead, they buried her.
When people see my mum, whose young, innocent face and beauty defy her aging body, or my dad, who still exudes strength, courage and great knowledge, they do not see their painful pasts. Some don’t care. They do not know what they had gone through. They do not care how they survived a marriage that grew out of nothing. They do not know how my dad battled his green-bottle addiction, hehehe and how in the company of his drunken friend, they rode a bike from Ibadan to Fiditi, half asleep through the journey. They did not see the silly fights and the extended family’s cultural wahala, with all their apparent nosey tendencies. They did not know how my dad self-sponsored himself through education. While others were in school, he was on the farm. Yet he picked examination forms, read, tutored himself and still passed. They didn’t know he was sent away from his home, his ‘compound’, at a tender age, because he confessed to a faith, to a certain Jesus, he knew little or nothing about. They didn’t see how my dad and mum embraced certain disciplines so they could get more education. They did not know how mum kept faith with this man despite his complexities and contradictions. Perhaps she saw what others didn’t see. All they see is how they raised godly children, sent them abroad, bought cars, build their own legacy, etc. They do not care how many fires have burnt them. They do not care about their current struggles and hopes. They do not want to learn from their mistakes and find wisdom. They do not know that even now more work is being poured into their shared love to get more worth. Life isn’t always juicy alone. I remembered how a pastor, in a church meeting, scoffed at my dad’s sympathetic speech towards some certain pastors struggling through myriads of negative experiences. In his little mental sky, my dad can never understand poverty, pain or tragedy. I only shook my head.
Sometimes I do see certain character weaknesses find expression from a troubled past; but I keep trusting the work of the Holy Spirit and God’s eternal promise to do a new thing. But I challenge you to know that some, perhaps many, successful stories (which for believers have nothing to do with how much money you have) today had a history of pains and tragedies connected to it. Many times, when some hate and envy other’s present, successful experiences, which is yet a slice of the greater things they are positioned for in the future, what they do not know is that the silences about those people’s pasts are what have made their present louder.
They had simply learnt to live again. Maybe you should too.
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