I looked at Obi, who kept stretching his legs and body wearily. Sleep still weighed heavily on his eyelid. He yawned as he rubbed off the soft mote at the side of his eyes and said.
“Mother has long been waiting for your return. She hardly would see morning.”
“Shii,” I hushed him, making him to stop.
We knew it was true, but we never loved the way he said it. To us, we thought he was wishing her dead. It was the heart of the night, and death could hear him and come to claim Mother. The darkest night I ever knew. We looked at one another’s faces and said nothing. It was only our load and we were complete to shoulder it. She was no other person’s Mother than the four of us and we had to share our sad and bad moments together. I was the one who they wanted to hear, to hear my tender voice, the voice they had known from their childhood; the voice of one who henceforth carried the authority; a voice they were ever ready to obey, my voice.
“The life of a man,’ Mother began to speak to our surprise, ‘is like a stone that holds nothing,’ she paused.
She was gabbing, suggesting nearness to death. None of us could hear her clearly or understood her.
‘But a woman life is the joy of her children swarming around her with strength. I am happy. A happy death shall mine be. Ikem, I leave my daughter, your sister and my sons, your brothers to your care. Please do care for her, the way a man would to his own soul. Give her the care she lacked, the sort I lacked in the hands of your father. I wish to join him now. Because of you, I had wished to continue but in every blink of an eye, I die silently. The journey is too far and I must start early. I must...’ she said no more
She gasped for breath and tears fell from her right eye. It became clear to me that we would soon be orphans. We brought ourselves together close to her and she squeezed our hands one at a time. We saw in her the pain, the regrets, the effort and the silence within which she never voiced out, the burden she carried all these years because of us, that ‘thing’ which we never knew too well, was eating her deep. She could not say it. It was her only affair, her only silence. It was only because of us. Her heart stopped beating. She was silent within, in her cold and quite soul, silent forever.
We stood and cried for Mother who had really suffered to see us grow. She understood the sacrifices of Motherhood. And she wished we understand all, which we did.
The second cock crow for that night was heard from a distant village and the bird which were believed to be evil chirped somewhere at the treetop. This bird must have cried before my arrival at least for seven days announcing Mother’s death. We called it nnunu mmuo. The night was darker and silent now.
That day, I realised the tremendous weight her death had placed on me; that I now had to raise my siblings alone. They too knew this. We looked at one another’s eyeball to eyeball, huddled together and cried openly at her side. We were no longer complete. From that moment, I became an adult; a man and I did everything I could as one. Things could never be the same again.
Death had folded Mother into silence.
EPILOGUE
The night Mother died was the saddest night of all. We the children huddled together and cried sadly for losing her. She could have been happy seeing us complete and full of life. The little children that suckled her and walked out their way in time, the little children she cuddled and knew from the first day they were born, now grown. She could have been proud that her wait worth it after all. Then the silent, which she had carried for long came clear to us that it was all because of us.
I tried to speak to her, but my lips were numb. I tried to embrace her, but my arms could not move. I tried a whisper, but she was too silent now to say anything or hear me out. There was a barrier between us - Death.
Then we were silent again for a while, silent with our eyes fixed upon her body. The lifeless body. Like a flash of thought which suddenly came into us, we looked at one another anxiously, each of us desiring to see what strength that was left to his companion. We looked into our eyes again and saw that we were no longer complete. Mother, father and grandfather had gone. At least some of us knew them all from the beginning of our world. No matter how good we meant and seemed to ourselves, we knew that the last and faithful person we needed in the house had gone.