Remembering the 5th of March

As the doctor stepped into the room, we knew. Bros Kay, our eldest brother looked at me as if to say prepare yourself. For the few seconds which felt like a lifetime, we waited for the doctor to say the inevitable. My mum had passed. Sisi Comfort was gone. Co-co-co as she was fondly called by friends because of her smart way of walking, despite her diminutive figure, had left us. It was the 5th of March. A Sunday morning. 9:36am.

There was a time when my mum was in the car with our house help at the time, Cletus. Now, Cletus took the concept of integrity to a level I was yet to witness in the very short life I had lived thus far. And I guess till now too, explaining why this incident has stuck with me since then. Cletus had just received the scolding of his life from mum, someone not known for suffering fools too gladly. But while mum was busy venting her anger in obvious frustration because Cletus had remained none the wiser about how to perform a particular chore, even though he had been with us for three years, Cletus ever so politely interjected by raising his hand. What does this boy have to say? She wondered. “Sorry, no be three years ma, na four years”. Neither my mum nor the driver who nearly lost control of the steering wheel, knew whether to laugh or to cry. How is any rational human being meant to respond to that? Not a word was said until they got home.

Until you experience something yourself, it’s difficult, if not impossible to fully understand how it feels. Mum passed away exactly 24 years ago. Till now, I still can’t use the ‘D’ word when referring to my parents passing. ‘Passed away’ just sounds and feels less final. Her passing happens to be the first time I experienced loss. There was nothing I had experienced before then, nor any pep talk anyone had ever given me, which did anything to prepare me for the intense sorrow I felt. All of a sudden, the world appeared like a different place. A parallel world. What was this place where my mum didn’t exist? It looked the same but felt so alien. I was lost. A major compass, anchor and common denominator from day one of my life up to that point was suddenly no longer there. I can’t really say this torrid experience made the loss of my dad thirteen years later any easier but because mum’s was the first, I will always remember very vividly how it made me feel. My mind tried to grapple with the fact that I would no longer hear “Sisi Comfort” or “Mama Dapo” when people called out to her. It put a definitive end to her long time wish that we would learn her native Itsekiri and Urhobo languages. Any hope of that went with her. From that point onward, life, as I had known it, changed forever. However, just as all those who had experienced such a painful event before me must have come to discover, I too, with the passage of time, came to the cold realization that life does indeed go on. As intensely painful as it was then, she had played her part and had taken her cue to depart the stage. It was left to the rest of us to decide how we will play out the subsequent scenes but the show as it were, must go on.

My mind travels back to my first few terms at boarding school in the UK. I was just eight years old. Some of the Oyinbo children in my dormitory would literally cry themselves to sleep every night. They were homesick. If they had thought they would find a sympathetic ear in me, it didn’t take them long to discover just how wrong they were. This “hard” black boy from Africa would instead mock them for crying over something so little. At least, how could their situation possibly compare with mine? My parents lived SIX MILLION MILES away…or so I believed at the time and was ever so quick to tell them. I felt compelled to help them put things in perspective. It was a good thing though that they were never there when mum took me back to school as a new term resumed. Before departing, she would exchange pleasantries with our headmaster Mr McDonald, and I would tip my head upwards, as if tracing something on the ceiling, in a vain effort to prevent the tears that were swiftly welling up in my eyes from dropping; or worse still, visibly rolling down my cheeks. Saying goodbye was excruciating. If only my new Oyinbo friends knew. This African boy wasn’t so tough after all.

Having sadly lost her mother at the tender age of 3 years old, mum was taken away from her Urhobo father’s (Okonedo) house and was raised by her Itsekiri maternal grandfather, Chief Ede. Hence why she claimed Itsekiri throughout her lifetime. Incidentally, Sophie Okonedo CBE, the Emmy winning and Oscar nominated Hollywood actress of Hotel Rwanda fame is my 1st cousin but in case anyone now has some bright ideas about an introduction, banish that thought. I don’t know her.

As a young lady, mum too enjoyed some fame as an accomplished traditional dancer and was honoured to lead the Warri Ladies Vanguard dance troupe to represent Nigeria during the opening ceremony of a Commonwealth Games, I believe in Canada. Driven by compassion to take care of people, she later trained to become a nurse but discovering that the sight of blood always left her feeling woozy, she soon decided it was time to pivot. Remaining in the line of meeting people’s needs, she ventured into business and became one of the country’s most successful textile traders in the 70s and 80s. But a heavy stroke at the age of just 49 in 1985 meant she had to slow life down completely.

A contemporary and close friend of Julie Coker (Sissy Clara in the original Village Headmaster series), Chief Hope Harriman, the late doyen of the real estate industry, and of course Alison Ayida, one of the Super Permanent Secretaries of those days (and colleague of my late father) and his wife, mum was an integral member of the close knit Itshekiri social circle.

You were extremely generous, singlehandedly financing the education of countless individuals. A fun loving, sports loving and movie loving mum; kind hearted but unmistakably tough; you remain sorely missed, even as we remember you specially today. Whoever coined ‘Warri no dey carry last’ for sure had you in mind and no one can convince me otherwise. I miss how I would excitedly play you the latest hit song and how you would bob your head from side to side and tap your feet. Oh! And I particularly miss the smile it always brought to your face. I miss so many things about you. But what is it that pains me the most? It has to be this. You never got to know our children and they never had that joy of knowing you. Mum, o da ejuma (Mum, good night). Love from your children.