He began to speak slowly and in pain, and in an unusual manner. He said many things of his sorrows, trials, woes and the hardships that he had endured from the age of four after his mother’s death. In the next season, he lost his grandmother and two sisters on one cold harmattan night during a fire outbreak while his father was away on hunting in a distant place at night. He told me how his grandmother
threw him out of the inferno when she could not hold on to life any longer and how he cried the next morning when her body and those of his two sisters were recovered from the debris, blackened beyond recognition. He also told me how, shortly after his mother’s death, he lost his left eyes at a very tender age to a very deadly fever, which mounted his fears that his life might soon end.
I was too young to comprehend details of his story, but I loved his quiet voice and soft touch. I never imagined I would hear such words from him. Soon he was silent again and when I wanted him to speak more, he could no longer continue. He was sobered by death’s approach. I saw it weighing him down the more. We were too young to be left alone with a single mother and an aged grandfather. That was his sadness.
The room grew intensely hot, with variety of feelings running through me. I moved closer to him. I wanted to hear more. Just when I reached out to take the hand he stretched towards me, he gasped for breath because he never wanted to die. He wanted to continue with us. So, he fought for air and wanted to say more, but could not. His voice died with him. Outside, the night was now far gone.
A cockcrow suddenly ended my reflection.
CHAPTER THREE
Sunset at Dawn
It is true that bad news travel like wildfire. The next morning, news of my father’s death had gained ground. It was circulated in whispers from lips of people in almost all parts of the village on their way to the stream, farms, and the market. As would be naturally expected, it was the women who spread the news, pitying my mother who, henceforth, would languish in protracted widowhood.
The day was just beginning; the darkness had not yet separated from it. Just before the sky finally took on the pale promise of a new day, the town crier announced to everyone that a young tree had suddenly fallen. That was the local way of announcing to the villagers the death of a notable person, to keep them from thinking and asking questions. My father died when life was at its sweetest to him; when he did not believe in death; when he was full of life. He was to the village a young tree that needed to grow to shelter them; a matured giant tree, to Mother and my siblings, matured enough to shelter us from realities of life. When the sad news had finally spread its tentacles, Umuoha village was gripped with fear and tears flowed freely. It was bad for a young man to die in his youth. At death, the goodness of one surfaced and everyone remembered the dead either with his good or bad deeds.
Soon, it was the time for the living to pay my father their last respect. Father would soon be interned. The elders and his age grade members came together and planned for his burial before the setting of the sun. It never occurred to me that I had lost a man I would have treasured all my young adult years.
My grandfather, Ndu, sat and supported himself with his walking stick. His age mates, too, sat close to him, consoling him. He was eating his sadness, grinding his teeth and shaking himself. Everyone felt for him. Heart-rending cries of the villagers were in the air. The young cried for him, the women cried in solidarity with Mother and the aged cried for grandfather. But, generally, people cried for us, his children. The wails and tears all around me confirmed a single reality- my father’s death. Mother was beyond any comfort given to her. Tears flooded her eyes. The women circled mother, looking at her and did not know what else to tell her or how to comfort her. They stayed motionless and unbending in their support for her. As much as I could remember, no one was strong enough to stop her from crying and shedding tears.
The old and the young around her and grandfather told her: ‘Kara obi. Oga adi mma’. They were words to comfort the bereaved, but she refused to listen to anyone’s voice.