“… The mysterious veil that hangs where sight and blindness are the same – the veil that revelation has not drawn aside – that science cannot lift, has fallen again between the living and the dead” (Robert Ingersoll)
You have reached the end of life and laid your worldly burdens down. Having done so as almost a centurion in a country with an average life expectancy of about 55 years (according to WHO data), society at large views the event of your passage as a celebration of life; an irony that seeks in vain to bejewel the wreak that marks the end of each and all by death. At the imminence of it, and obviously sensing it, you did your best to prepare me for the inevitable and to comfort me in advance for it. I hear now the resonance of your voice enjoining me to remember that even Methuselah eventually died.
You beckoned Death to tarry no more but to come quick. Even in this, your thoughts and motive, as always, were noble, caring, selfless and other-centred. No lack or deprivation of your own ever rendered you insensitive to the needs and comforts of those around you. As you assured me, your life has been well lived and enjoyed, and it was better to go when your senses were still keen and your mind undimmed and not after becoming vegetative or a burden of any sort to us your children by effect of age. To Providence goes my thanks for granting you this last wish, when about an hour after Noon on 6/6/2025, in a painless instant, you painlessly slipped away into the realm of perfect peace.
Despite this, I cry in the silence of my heart. The echo of my silent wailing reverberates in my ears as I behold your unanimated body and your forever silenced lips from which there is no more word of comfort forthcoming.
You were not born into wealth and your education was modest, the latter having slipped into permanent jeopardy following the loss of your mother so early in your life. From then on, at that relatively tender age, you had had to assume and take on, in your own life and in that of your now late brother (Victor ‘Soji), the role and burden of a mother in a polygamous homestead. As your mother was no longer available to look out for and defend your interest vis-à-vis other children in the family, you slipped down the ladder of the priorities of the family head, your father, my grandfather. And so, at that early age, you became your own providence.
When after primary school, your education was cut short for lack of funding, you became your own teacher too; never tiring of self-taught through devouring every book that came your way.
As I write this, I cannot but recall, with some regrets, that each time I was promoted to a higher class, I always refused to inherit the used textbooks of my older siblings. My school textbooks had to be brand new; I must put each one of them to my nose to take in the aroma of newness; my fingers must run through and feel the crisp newness of every page! You indulged me in this childish obsession even though your modest means could ill-afford it. So long as the academic accolades kept coming, I could do no wrong and you saw and treated such irrational demands or expectations as resource requirements to be met by you without complaint! Thank you, daddy; and, if it is not too late to say so, I am sorry for that behaviour.
In your life in service to country and community you cared not for threats of dire consequences or any promise of undeserved preferences over the preservation of public faith. To you, doing the right thing uncompromisingly was the wisest policy and the pleasure of the good consequence from it was your satisfactory recompense. Your lips gave utterance to exactly what your brain conceived, and to your thoughts you were true and faithful. In all situations, you always meant what you said and said what you meant. In you, there was no deceit. Plain and unpretentious you were – ofttimes to your own disadvantage and detriment. You never gave your word without keeping it. You fulfilled all your contracts once entered, irrespective of how entered – whether by word of mouth, unwitnessed but in honour, or in documented form. Eye-service, timeserving, fawning and any kind of pretence were anathema to you. Your nature abhorred suspicion and no arrow of slander could pierce and poison your mind against those you hold dear.
I thank you for bringing me into this world and nurturing me the way you did. Had I any say in the matter then, a better father I could not have chosen. As Jack Thorne said, “Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch”. And so, because you are part of my soul and the souls of each of my siblings, your grandchildren and great grandchildren, you live on, and your memory remain and stand indestructible. It was your lifelong belief, according to which you lived, that there is a world beyond this where our life’s deeds follow to be judged by a loving and just God. If so, your honesty, sincerity and faithfulness in all your endeavours on this side of that veil will herald you into that place of justification and peace. But if, against what you believed and held dear, the grave concludes all and you are truly gone; if beyond the tomb there is nothing to be seen or heard; if darkness and silence cover all and is all there is: then, the world remains better for the way you your life was lived. Yet, because of love, we hope the former is true and the latter is not. Farewell daddy! And again, Fare thee well!!
Olumide-Fusika, SAN (Son)
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