Ya dibakene

My Favourite picture of Mother

Death is so final and its finality is what makes it so painful. The person is gone forever and ever and there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. 

The beautiful go with their beauty, the badly behaved with their bad behaviour, the smart with their smartness and knowledge, only the rich go with nothing, they leave it all for the living to either enjoy or fight over.

The 8th of December will forever be a special day to me not just because it is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, an important feast day in the Catholic Church, it was on this day two years ago that my beautiful mother breathed her last on earth.

I was in church on a Wednesday morning, the 9th day of December 2015, Benediction was going on and I knelt in church face flat on the floor praying desperately that God would heal mother. Oh God I prayed from my heart so desperately. I wanted her to live, I needed her to live. 

There were so many things I had not done for her, so many things I still needed to tell her and seek her counsel for. As I bent over on the floor of the church, I saw her and it was like a vision, she looked beautiful and her silver hair glowed. 

She was slimmer than her normal self and looked so happy. Seeing her that way made me happy and I praised God for a Christmas miracle but little did I know.

When I got home from church, my husband broke the news to me that mum passed on that night at almost midnight on Tuesday the 8th of December 2015. 

My world crumbled before me, so I had become motherless? But I told mum that I was coming back, I had gone to execute a job and then come back with the children for Christmas besides, I  just thanked for a Christmas miracle, what went wrong?

Not now mother, not now, there were people that I still needed to report to her, she knew the right words to say, there were still a lot of things to learn from her. I wasn’t ready to lose her, I was like a suckling child still and I needed her to wean me. She made me laugh all the times that we spoke; she made me see things differently. 

Oh how much I needed Ezenwanyi!

I had not given her my best, she was always okay, never needed anything from anyone, she was too satisfied, I had not called her as much as I should have, she called me more, I had not visited her as much as I should. In fact I had not done much for my Omalicha.

I took it for granted that she would always be here, death was not in the picture, she was fearless and never feared dying, she was sure that she would make heaven, she always prayed for a happy death and believed that God would grant her wish. He sure did.

I held on to her in the hospital and if tears could heal, my tears would have healed her ten times over, I prayed for her and as I cried I saw her tears, she had lost it all physically but her tears told me that she could hear me and I knew that she cried not because she was afraid to die but because she hated to see me cry for her.

As I write the tears won’t stop flowing, I grieve still, when will it all go away? I have an issue I really want to discuss with her and she would have had the right advice to give at this time. I have searched for answers and only mother would have had it.

Ugoeze Ferdinand, my heart grieves for you, I do not know how not to mourn like a sinner, God knows that I have faith and believe in the resurrection of the body and I know that He will bear with me for crying still. I cry because I will not see you this Christmas, I will not hear your voice and I will not eat your delicious food. No one will say “ri juo nsi to me” and go scot free. (Ri juo nsi onu literally means “fill your mouth with poop”)

Recently I reminisced on the Achara soup that mother made in those days. I saw a picture of it and craved it the whole day, mother made a whole pot of it the last time we talked about it, froze it and sent it all the way from Enugu to Lagos. My action woman!

This time I wondered when I would taste the soup again, Achara soup is not a common Igbo soup and not one to make randomly; so it was a big shock that while I discussed it with a group of friends and told them of how much I missed mum who would have happily made the soup for me I saw a bunch of Achara (baby bamboo) tied up and kept on a table in front of a roadside “mama put”.

I pulled over and asked the lady I saw there if she was going to use the Achara to prepare Achara soup and she said yes. I couldn’t believe it; I have never seen a restaurant that prepares Achara soup, never, please if you have seen any tell me.

I gave the lady my number and as soon as the soup was ready she called me. I wouldn’t ordinarily buy soup from such a place, rice maybe but not soup. It was too much of a coincidence and as I enjoyed my delicious meal of Achara soup and fufu, I was still in disbelief.

When I spoke to Kerus my sister about the strange coincidence with the Achara soup, it struck me that it was mother who sent that soup. She definitely did and no one can convince me otherwise. Typical of mother, she loved to see people enjoy their choice of meal and she never failed to provide the food.

Thank you my Mummisco, even in death you are still a provider and I love you even more.

I wish you were still here but ya dibakene!