“I shall be going back home my daughter,” my grandfather said. “When you feel lonely, you can come over to my hut with the children.”
As he stood up to go, Mother said nothing. The old man bared his teeth with emotion – a habit he inherited from his own father. It was something he did to ease his pain when he was not happy. As he left, Mother hissed, laid her hands on Mma, who had now eaten, caressing her back to make her sleep again. Soon, she began sleeping. Her breathing was fast and fresh as she slept innocently.
Mother went back to peeling the yam again while I was still remembering my grandfather who had just left. His visit had been cut short by Mother’s cries. he could have stayed longer, I thought. As the thinking weighed my mind, I turned to look at my Mother again as she was busy with the task of cooking. Between her and grandpa, I was lost on whom to sympathize with whenever I thought of my father. Naturally, I felt too bad that my Mother who was probably of my age when she married my father.
At that moment, there was nothing I could do about it.
CHAPTER TWO
Reflection
My father’s death brought Mother many sleepless nights. Each day, she was emaciating and losing her old self. Few days after the last funeral, she was told by the elders to remain at my father’s personal hut all nights for a whole year, to keep the fire smoldering with logs of wood. That was the tradition: compulsorily, a woman pays her duty to the husband by serving periods of mourning as a sign of her love for him. Daily, I would watch Mother as she observed her one year of fulfilling this tradition. Our compound, this house that was ours, suddenly became a lonely place that seemed to belong to another separate world. The entrance was completely barricaded, to my utter dislike. As a boy, I know the effect it was having on me. Here, the only things that seemed to roam freely, littering everywhere with their droppings, were birds and other domestic animals. But it was my home, and would always be. Sometimes, the thought of being the first son was hardly on my mind. I was too young to channel my thoughts that way. With feelings that I was sure would be short-lived, I was made to know that one day, the large compound would be mine.
All through her one year of mourning my father, Mother dressed completely in black, ate little and sometimes nothing. She did not bath for that whole year nor lived a free and normal life. During those many nights that seemed to stretch forever, she would cry like a child and no strong voice was around to comfort her. This became so frequent that we became worried she would develop a sickness that could later affect her health drastically. Even in my young mind, I came to realize that it was part of mourning ritual.
For the next seven days after the burial of my father, when everyone must have fallen asleep, Mother would weep, then wait for some seconds, and without forewarning, when I would think she had finally gone to sleep, she would scream my father’s name. It was during these days that we seldom entertained older women who would come to the house to show their sympathy, encourage her and left us again. At nights, Mother would quietly cook my father’s favorite meal and kept them in his room that had now been restricted to everyone except for her and grandfather. It was believed that they communicated with him at those early days of his death. It was also believed that his memory had not decayed and he (my father) could still communicate with the living until the first six months when the earth must have eaten his whole flesh.
This belief kept me thinking to the extent that I wished he would come back to us again. In the middle of the night, when rats had swarmed to feed from where the food was kept, we would view it as an indication that the spirit of my father was at peace and that he was happy with Mother. When she slept, which was seldom, she would smile and call his name in her dreams; sometimes, it was a whisper, after which she would wake up to start crying again.
I knew from that moment that it was hard to forget a loved one. Death throws a lot of burden and anguish to the mourner that he sometimes doubt what he had not done well.