CHAPTER SIX
Grandfather Died
The mourning period ended one year after. The sackcloth had been removed and burnt. Mother took a refreshing bath and for the first time after the one-year long period, she looked beautiful and was her old self again. She longed to see that day and it came. With darkness for a night and sunlight for a day, the year rolled to an end. I admired her in her new clothes and pondered over what she had passed through for the period of one year she had stayed without bath. New and clean cloths bought at the funeral replaced the crumpled and old ones. As for the short knife, which was her only companion for that one-year, it was thrown into a forest. That was when everything about the mourning ended. Now father would belong to the world of the dead.
She now took her bath as often as she wanted and kept us neat as well. The one-year period was ended by a market outing. It was the period widows show themselves to the people that they had observed the compulsory one-year mourning for their husbands. She went to the market with her friends who carried her basket as she walked around, showing herself, greeting people and buying few things for our visitors. I was told she was the object of attraction, especially in the eyes of young men and women. Everyone said ndo to her. They were only concerned that she was widowed so young in life when most of her mates where still not married. She accepted their greetings and smiled as she passed them. Others, especially the old women, flooded her with gifts.
She had instructed us to stay home with grandfather to help him entertain our numerous visitors and friends, while her friends accompanied her in her best outing attire. Towards evening, many gathered and thanked Mother dearly for the hospitality she showed them despite her age. My grandmother also thanked her and cried loudly that her only daughter had been widowed before her. It was the first time, she cried over my father’s death. Mother was now a widow like other women who had also lost their husbands. In the women’s corner, which was the largest in number, noise came up and died down. Laughter, temporary quarrelling, loud talks and dances were performed. Mother was very busy attending to calls from our visitors. I was not personally impressed. They came because Mother was going for her final mourning outing. We had stayed a whole one-year and never saw any of them and as soon as the little gathering ended, they would never be seen again. Mother was happy that the day ended well. We entertained everyone that came. Later that night, we enjoyed a good mood with grandmother after. She left the next day.
The mourning period affected our yam barns and farms. While we descended on the ones we had preserved for the next six months of the year, weeds outgrew and damaged the staked ones in our farm. Mother could not do any farm work in her condition and I was too young to do them alone. Our old farms were in no good shape and it was clear that we had to do something before the next farming season or the farm would be ‘lost’. The loss of father, who was the breadwinner of our family, pitched our past against our future. We had to live our remaining life without his help, his presence and his care. His death meant that our former ways of living would be altered. We accepted the fact that we would never see him again.
Mother had sold our cassava farm and a good proportion of the available farm produce that we had long stocked to ease the debt we inherited from buying yams for my father’s second burial. The money she realised was not enough for the debts; she would continue paying even years afterward. The next farming season did not fare better for us. The yams did not do well. Mother was only a woman, so it would be difficult for her to grow yams as extensively as men could. I, too, was very young and it was a burden that soon would be rested on me to carry on with the man’s work.
The hunger that greeted us the next few years after the funeral was entirely the fault of our sympathizers, who demanded beyond what tradition laid down. Father belonged to many age groups and so they all came and demanded their share of whatever was provided. Grandfather and my mother nearly collapsed under the strain of different rites. We were part of the village and in some ways, my father and his father had eaten in the gathering of people in the past; it is believed that one good turn deserves another.