Everything & Anything

This is from my big sister, Ayopo. Love you Sis. It is well!!! Today, or shall I say tonight, the 28th of August makes it 23 days since my daddy passed away. It is interesting how I refer to my father as daddy. While he was alive I only ever thought of him as Opani. Now, I think of him as daddy, a term often used by very young children to refer to their father. It is still like a nightmare to me you know. Opani, who defined my perception of males and relationships first before anyone else, is gone. My father was indeed (and in my mind will always be) a very special man. My first instinct when I remember he is no more physically here is still panic. How can it be? The vibrant, brilliant, kind-hearted, selfless disciplinarian who bore and raised me is no more. He taught us all about values. Honor, humility, honesty, courage and a kindness that is still unmatched today. He taught us early that you have to be secure in yourself to add value to any life, yours or someone else’s. He ta...

Life is a terminal illness that has only one end - death. I do not doubt that there is life after death, for, to doubt is to perish. To believe otherwise is to open a door to despondency, depression and sorrow. I have to believe that the death of this earthly body is the doorway to another life. That my father is somewhere else, learning wonderful things up there in the sky (or wherever heaven is). I hope he gets answers to all the questions he ever asked and could not find the answers to; revelations of the mysteries he pondered on; validation and affirmation of the things he believed in. And that, finally, he gets a working internet connection - his main beef with the mobile internet gadgets being sold by the telecoms companies was that they just did not work! He always said that he believed that there was heaven and there was hell but that God was so merciful that few, if any, people would be in hell. Now, it is 8pm and I reach for my phone to call my father, for it is at this...

"Mainbobo" is how my father's phone numbers are stored in my phone. Now he's gone. This morning at 4:35am, he moved on. He leaves behind a grieving family - both immediate and extended; and people whose lives he touched one way or another. My father has left us a legacy that, if we tried, we could never live up to. He taught us fairness - he believed firmly in being just; he made us self-sufficient and independent - to him, dependency was a disease that was terminal; he encouraged learning in every form - to him, knowledge was power and absolute. Today, August 5, 2010, my Mainbobo has gone to his rest in the hope of rising again on that last day. I know that though he was not perfect, he tried to do right by people. The good he did for others continues to come back to us a million-fold, in many different ways. It's just been hours and I miss him already. I cannot weep because I am yet to fully comprehend the extent of this loss. Who will I call in the morn...

As the title of this blog shows, I wrote this the day after a dear friend passed on. At the time, it was too painful to print. A year and a bit have gone by and, though the void created remains, I can now look at this piece and not be weepy. I lost a friend and a big sister yesterday. I cannot believe that I will not see her again or hear her voice on the phone, telling me that I'm just a lazy, spoilt girl and that she needs to tell Shola to stop indulging me. I am going to miss her dry sense of humour, her practical nature, her brief texts (she hated them) and her equally brief phone calls. I am so going to miss her. She'd been through a lot - the challenges of infertility, multiple and enlarged myomas - fibroids; spiritual issues, (she was told that she was an "ogbanje princess", complete with spirit husband and kids. A princess who decided that life in that world was no longer for her and so decided to find her way here.) For me, her telling me those stories ...