I wish I could take myself back to last three Septembers. The heavy rains are now a reminder of the stories you told me while you did your woodwork. I remember that your hair line started to recede fast and that your barber made it even worse by trimming too deeply.
Your voice began to change too. It was as though someone had placed a dry piece of cloth in your throat one day and when you talked, it was you trying to cough it out.
Last September, everything changed. Every. Thing.
Your eyes wore darkness like a cloak, pocketing too many secrets. You slapped me too often for the silliest things and the littlest mistakes. It was as though someone had foretold your end to you, and that person was you. You loved music. It was something everyone who knew you thought you would take to your grave when you died. But you became such a huge disappointment that not even Ehweyanudje’s voice could make you happy. You destroyed the tapes. Days turned to nights. Nights turned to hell. I was always holding my breath.
I prayed to the skies.
I prayed because I loved you. I loved you. It was painful. It hurt. But I loved you.
Perhaps you realized I was a mistake. Of course I was, always have been, but I was not your mistake. But who I am to tell you that now? You left your family, abandoned your wife and three kids back in Ijawland – a strange land to search for peace as if peace is something you travel miles to seek; as if peace was in Okurepko. You were a deeply troubled man. But you found peace in a shrine. You found me. My name was Onanojah. My name is Onanojah translated to be Problem, Sufferhead, Challenge etc. You found peace in a thing named Sufferhead.
I knew something was wrong when you didn’t want to talk. You were always snapping. I cried many times. I ran away and came back.
I tolerated two months of your irritating behavior before I found your body slumped over the half-broken kitchen table. I don’t know what you drank. I didn’t care to know. I remember I screamed. The neighbors I hated came running in.
At first they rained insults on you for being a such a coward. Then they looked at me with heavily suspicious eyes and said maybe it was me who put something in your water because I had always looked at you with hate in my eyes.
It was after midnight later that night while my tears rolled down my face, staining the very spot where you had died, with a glass of kerosene twirling between my fingers that I finally got the news. Two months prior to your suicide, your wife and your three kids had died in a boat accident. They were crossing the big river to come look for you. The hunger had become severe. She was coming to drop your children with you. Unfortunately, the boat capsized and they all drowned.
How could you bottle up so much pain?
You made many mistakes. Maybe if you hadn’t left your family, you would not have stumbled upon a 12 years old me at a shrine where you had gone to seek for help. Maybe you wouldn’t have taken pity on me because of my enlarged stomach, dirty dreadlocks, and thin legs; an orphaned little boy serving the gods whose egos were swollen with sinful pride. You were sure I was your purpose in life. You forgot your family back home. Or did you? The Chief Priestess warned you: taking me in would lead to your downfall but you looked at her with sad eyes and said you didn’t have much to lose anyway. But Father, you did.
You were a kind man for leaving me the carpentry shop and all your money as my inheritance. You were a kind man for teaching me how to read properly.
People said you died a stupid death. That you failed at life.
But as I stand here today over your grave, wearing the brown jacket you bought me the first day you adopted me, I know you did not die a failed man. You may have been a coward while you were alive running away from all those fears. But you definitely did not die a coward. Men make mistakes, but only few have the courage to punish themselves for it. I was your punishment.
Rest on forever, father.
You are the only hero I’ve ever known.
Fortune Aganbi
UsEveryday 