I recall that day 20 years ago when I returned to Lagos from Kebbi state after the NYSC to see that my sister had drastically changed. In a bad way. She was a beautiful woman, a Lagos Sisi, full of life and vigour before that. She took after my father with fair and lush skin and the comeliness of our mother.
It was in 2003 that life ‘happened’ to her. She was married with four kids and I had lived with her family for about a decade before that time. At 35, she was transformed from a fine woman full of life to a person suffering from a mystifying and debilitating illness. She could not walk nor talk properly and had grown emaciated with hair falling. I was shocked at her sudden change from a Sisi to a bag of bones.
Until February this year when I received the call that she had passed. Nothing prepared me for it. She had been ill a few days before and had been rushed to the hospital. But that was not unusual. She was always ill but sometimes had particularly bad spells that required her to be taken to the hospital. But she always came out of it. So, I wasn’t particularly worried when I heard she had been rushed to the hospital. “It is one of those bad episodes,’’ I told myself.
People die every day. And we are powerless to stop it. Even as I write this, a family somewhere is grieving over the recent loss of a loved one. But what is striking is the way we consider death and suffering that don’t personally affect us. We treat these as statistics, mere numbers and figures in the news, forgetting that the deceased had names, grudges, goals, and lives just like us.
JuliusOgunro This is a very touching and heart breaking story - of family, memory, nostalgia and fate. Sorry about your loss. May her soul continue to Rest in Peace. 🙏