Why Not?

My mood today is reflective. There is a dull feeling inside.

I remember the last time I felt like this was watching the twin towers come down on the small television screen in my office, and then turning back to the papers spread across my table and thinking just how inconsequential everything now seemed. Nothing made sense.

Yesterday I walked into my daughters bedroom and just stood there watching her as she slept. I bent over her, drank in her toddler smells and kissed her, over and over. I felt my fears retreat when I did that.

The tears have finally come and understanding and acceptance of what has happened are desperately trying to fight their way through the dullness of my mind. I have read and re-read all the comments that have been left. I have been surprised at how many of you have suffered the loss of a friend as well and I have been touched by your kind words of encouragement and support.

I think what has rattled me the most is that death, or grief, seems to be coming closer and closer to home. Death, in my naiveté, was the exclusive reserve of the elderly, the terminally ill or those caught up in unfortunate situations like car or plane crashes. But obviously, the joke was on me. The realisation that I, we, are not immune from it is hitting hard. We are now losing friends – people who are our age in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s- the age where we are at our most indestructible, or so I used to think. And the deaths are all so weird – happening for no apparent reason or cause. No lengthy illnesses, no genetic disorder, no apparent ill health. Just normal healthy people dropping down dead.

As a friend of mine told me, When it is time, it is time. I find no comfort in that.

As Ekoya so eloquently put it…

"What's the point?"

I would rather ask: "Why not?".

Since we do not know what life holds for tomorrow and whether we'll even be here tomorrow, I think like your friend did, the best we owe ourselves is to live the things we want today hoping tomorrow will be ours.

And if perchance tomorrow never becomes ours, we would at least die doing what we dreamed. The alternative would be to do nothing, afraid of "struggling" because it may not be worth our while and then tomorrow comes, and we would have done nothing. That would be emptiness.

The baby I carry has begun to move reminding me that as one life departs another is about to be born to replace it.

So I move on, draw a deep breath and ask ‘Why Not?’

My friend, this is for you....

I Squeeze a Little Tighter

When I hug I squeeze a little tighter

When I kiss I kiss a little longer

When I speak I speak a little softer

When I smile I smile a little warmer

When I touch I touch a little firmer

When I listen I listen with a little more interest

When I search I search for a little more understanding

When I question I question with a purpose

When I see I see with a little more clarity

When I am tempted to complain

I stop

Think of you

And I squeeze a little tighter

What's the Point?

This is a bit of a difficult post to write because my thoughts and feelings are all over the place at the moment. So forgive me if it reads a bit incoherent.

On the 27th of December I was chatting on the phone with a friend of many years who had come over to the UK late last year to do a Masters Degree, about life, future plans and the holiday season. Y’know, general stuff.

Then yesterday I got a call from another mutual friend informing me that she had died.

Just. Like. That.

Apparently she had complained of having chest and stomach pains, a few hours later she was dead. It happened on New Years day.

She is being buried on Saturday morning.

I just can’t get my head around it.

I can’t cry, the tears don’t come. I can’t think because I don’t understand. The question that plagues me is So What’s The Point??

What’s the point of all the struggle? We struggle to get through kindergarten, primary and secondary school. Then we struggle through University. Then we struggle to get a good job. We struggle to get a promotion and when that doesn’t come we struggle to save up money so we can do a Masters preferably abroad. We struggle to get a partner. We struggle to make ends meet, start a business, make our marriages/ relationships work, raise a family, become a success. From the day we are born life seems to be one long struggle. It may not always appear that way but my cynical mind says we do. And at the end of it? Well, we die.

I know that this is perhaps a very bleak way to look at life but that’s the place I find myself right now.

My friend was full of life, full of plans, full of strategies for the future. Asking her if she intended to settle down over here after she finishes her Masters ‘Abeg no-oh’ she replied emphatically ‘Naija is too sweet. I’ll be going back O!’

I keep seeing pictures of her flashing through my head – her skinny legs sticking out from beneath her school uniform skirt, making noise at the back of the classroom during lessons, growing up, going into University. So many pictures. But the worst thing is I keep playing the last conversation we had over the phone in my head over and over again. I can’t believe it was barely two weeks ago.

Life can sometimes be so crap. What the heck is the point of it all??

Of Death, Rights and the Future

(A dark post)

As I watch my belly swell with the new life that grows within me, I find my mind increasingly filled with thoughts of death. I try to shove these thoughts aside but it’s difficult to and they forever hang onto the fringes on my consciousness.

You see I have what one would call elderly parents I guess. My father is seventy-six and my mother is sixty-seven. They are both in very good health, for which I am very grateful but I know at the back of my mind that they both perhaps have on average about twenty years each left on this earth. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not being morbid or wishing the inevitable to happen, but it’s a fact of life and I know, more so now than ever before that my parents are not going to be around forever, as much as I would like them to be. Each time they come to visit or I go over to see them, they are that bit more frailer, more greyer, more older, that bit more not able to do certain things. The last time I saw my dad after about three years, I had to go to my room for a good cry. This wasn’t the strong athletic man I grew up with, who seemed to be invincible. This was an old, frail man that stood before me. I was so shocked by what I saw and it hit me really hard.

Now, practically every time I speak with my parents the conversation almost always includes this bit…

‘PTS, do you remember Mr/Mrs. so and so?’
‘Don’t tell me. They’ve died’
‘Yes, two days ago. The funeral is next month.’
‘How old were they?’
‘Sixty-five/Seventy/Eighty.’

And I have to hold myself back from blurting out ‘Oh, they tried now. That’s a good age.’ Why? Because it hits me that my parents are in the same age bracket, and suddenly sixty-five/seventy/eighty is not a good age after all.

When I think of the future and the unavoidable, I guess I worry most about my mother. As a foreigner living in Nigeria, I don’t think my mother will have many rights in the event of her husbands death in spite of the fact that she has lived in Nigeria now for almost 47 years. I may be wrong though. However, even if the law is on her side in terms of inheriting the property and other worldly possessions, it largely depends on the largesse of my dad’s extended family.

Let’s be realistic here. On the death of a woman’s husband in Nigeria, be she a foreigner or not, seven times out of ten the family can make serious wahala for her regardless of what the law says. For now, my fathers’ family have been great – all of his siblings bar one have passed on and my dad, although the youngest, put all his nieces and nephews through school. The majority of them are doing well for themselves but there is always the possibility of someone popping out of the wood work – as it so often happens back home. And it’s these wood work popping individuals that can make life very miserable for the family the man has left behind. I worry about this, I really do. In addition, there’s the fact that my parents had only girls – so there is no mighty Son to fight for us. I have no idea if my father has made a will and I have never asked. Wills are still a bit of a taboo subject as the person you are asking usually tends to think that you are planning their demise.

And even if the worst case scenario doesn’t play out i.e. some stranger wanting to claim all my dad’s property for themselves, I worry what will happen to all the property of which he has quite a few. I know for sure that I will never go back home to live – not in Benin anyway, where the said properties are – and I don’t envisage my mother remaining there on her own. Both my sisters are married to foreigners so there’s no chance of them returning either. What’s going to happen to all the stuff in the family home? What’s going to happen to all the houses? Do we keep them (to what end?) or do we sell (which would break my heart as the house I grew up in holds very many dear memories for me)? There will be so many life changing decisions to make. I get weary and depressed just thinking about it.

It’s a strange post and a sensitive subject I know but it’s the place I find myself at, at the moment.

If there are any lawyers reading this post, or if you are knowledgeable about what the rights of foreigners married to Nigerians are I would really appreciate some advice or signpost me in the direction where I can look for further information.

Of morbid thoughts and death

Do people who are about to die sense that they are going to beforehand?

Is there an aura around human beings just before they die they we can see?

I don't really expect any answers to these thoughts swirling around my head.