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The first time it happened, I was 10 I think, no I was 9 going on 10, we were in class and the next thing we knew, they called her to the principal's office that she was needed at home. Word on the street was that her father was travelling abroad and wanted to see her before he left....(and so they drove from Enugu to Iwo just for that.) Anyways, she was gone for a month, people speculated, but she came back eventually, but she was never the same.
Those that knew, shared what had happened, and we were all ok with that, we respected her privacy and didn't do anything funny. Some nights she would start screaming, some days we would all be playing and then people would run up and down the quadrangle, and Aunty Ngozi would appear with Sister, and she would grab on to their legs and wail, and with pity in our eyes we would watch them as they would drag her to the matron's room. Those were days that were bad, on good days when we realized that we were reminiscing about home too much we would stop.
The next time I remember it happening, it was the holidays, I think it was easter break, my cousin and I were usually the first ones to leave school, but then we were about the last ones, we knew our parents remembered it was going home day, my aunt eventually showed up just when we dragged our grumpie selves to the dinning room. We were too excited we left our plates in the cooking area, jumped on her and asked her what the heck took her so long. When she told us, we were sober for a few minutes, all I could picture was a little girl leaning on a young boy with bulgy eyes and of course the baby was being carried by the older man, just the way I had seen them at the wedding a few years back....
Each time I hear/see/meet people who have lost their mothers in one way or another, I get chills, before I thought the older you get the easier it is to accept these tragedies but that is not true, when I was younger my mum was a tyrant, Osama Bin Mummy, mean, didn't listen to a thing, would just slap you around at the slightest excuse, and then I remember all those other lovely times when my mum would carry me when I fell, seat by me when I was sick, be in the car to pick me up from school. The smell of her perfume on school grounds on sad sappy days when the world just seems gloom and no teachers were willing to teach. The little things.
As I'm growing older though I'm coming to realize that the longer people stay in our lives the more we miss them when they are gone, and in these trying times, I can't help but think about my aunt, the way she laughed a lot, the way she talked, her cute face, the make up that always seemed to be the same color as her outfits and always suited her. The way she called us baby, and always wanted to be Nigerian, her lovely christmas trees and the way she said Children, there's a lot of things I'll miss about her, and to think that just before the incidence happened she flashed through my mind and I thought of calling her up, I should have. May her soul rest in peace, she will trully be missed, and I saw someone that looked like her today, she was pretty, confident, always laughing, so full of life and she robbed off on people, she was the best. :)
Cherish those around you, you never know when they'll leave and never come back and you'll just sit there watching their coffins go 6 feet underground, soon to be food to worms and you'll never get to talk to them again, all these lovely conversations that you wish you had with them will linger in your head and you'll just wonder, why now? Why God? What am I supposed to do?

May we all have no regrets

2 Tricks and a death.

I hear that we must always celebrate life, we must always be grateful for the lives of those around us because we don't know when they'll live.

Last week monday my dad was in surgery, and my mind was running all over the place, the man has beat all odds and lived, he's played chess with death a million times and he is still here, a little routine surgery shouldn't scare me but he did. He came home alive and well, and you know same old man I've always known.

I remember when he got the scare a day to his 50th birthday, the whole bank scandal was at its peak and they needed him urgently in Nigeria, he was preparing to leave when the Dr called that he must be in the ER or he could drop dead, so we all marched ourselves to the ER where he was admitted because they found Deep Vein Trombosis in him through the CT scan that was supposed to find the catalyst behind his cough. Anyways, after the dr waved his magic wand and called my dad a medical mystery, we all went home a day later, dad on the couch laughing as usual.
Did I talk about the time that he was sick for months during the whole coup d'etat with Diya and co, we were on our way to Abuja, and half way through dad just started throwing up, all the way to Abuja, we got a dr from the hotel and they later flew him to Lagos, after weeks of hospital changes and him getting snuck into the house for late night showers, all the while giggling, I had to go back to school he went to London and came back very well. Apparently, the doctors thought he was going to die, and there I was thinking the worst that could happen to him was the drip in his hand....My dad!

He is alive and well at home now, bubbling, obviously he is not dead! I just love him more.

When I was in JSS2, at Regina Mundi Girls Secondary School with my fav cousin bukkie, I remember one closing day like that, probably my last at the school cos I remember Tinuke Agoro dragging her broomstick legs to the door as we settled for lunch, crying that we could be in Lagos enjoying meatpies. Anyways, Bukkie's mummy came late for us she was just coming from my Uncle Segun's wife's burial. My Uncle Segun, I don't know him too well or remember seeing a lot of him as a child, but I knew what he looked like, he was my Aunty Yemisi's brother and that was good enough for me! He lost his wife to Lung cancer, she left behind 3 kids, a boy and two girls. Femi was my age, Nifesi a bit younger and the little baby that I remember seeing at Aunty Yemisi's wedding.
I never officially met my Uncle Segun's offsprings till 2002, I was in Nigeria visiting, and they were at our house for the Yuletide season, it hit it off almost immediately. Nife was mum's little baby, she'd run to her and we'd get all we wanted, she replaced Bukkie's cute charms and we loved it. We played, we fought, we laughed but we never got to cry because amongst cousins sorrow is non-existence. We made promises that we would visit in 2003 and spend Christmas together again, but then in March 2003, I got a call from my mum that Femi died.

I never got over that.

On Monday, I turned my phone off for the day by the time I checked my messages, my sister had a Vm for me, I couldn't make sense of what I heard, but I remember, dad, accident, unconscious, call mum. So I freaked and called my mum, my dad was fine my sister hadn't spoken to them. Then I panicked, who's father is unconscious. I managed to stay strong till I was about to get home and I heard the full story, my Uncle Segun was in an accident and unconscious. Just saturday he came up in our conversation about how he was so close to my grandpa and how my grandpa's death hit him really had.

I talked to God again that night, I put my Uncle Segun's life in his hand to wake him up, nice and spanking new like a baby but even better with fabulous adult features. Then I went to bed after talking to my tulelo. So why is it that my dad woke me up tuesday to tell me that my Uncle Segun died, leaving behind my two cousins?!