By Sa’adatu Aliyu
It was in the harmattan of December 2023. My siblings and I were at home when my elder sister, the firstborn, called to update us on her husband’s current state.
He had recently undergone surgery and was back home recovering with his family. I couldn’t tell whether she spoke calmly or sounded agitated when she called my brother on the phone. But as soon as he hung up, he said she told him that her husband’s sickness had resurfaced, and they were heading to the hospital.
Aside from my faith in God that everything would be fine, I remained calm because I believed it was normal for people to fall ill from time to time. Sometimes, the illness may be severe, and other times, it may not, but eventually, everything will be fine. I held onto this thought as I continued eating my plate of boiled yam.
But shortly after, my brother called back to ask what was happening, as anxiety was starting to get the better of him. I kept eating the soft yam with a sprinkling of oil and “yaji” while my brother waited for my sister to answer the phone.
“Ya rasu, he’s dead,” she said as soon as she picked up the phone. My brother then softly exclaimed, “From Allah we are and to Him is our return.”
Since I hadn’t considered the possibility of death in our family and had taken the illness lightly – I mean, I, too, have undergone surgery before – my brother’s words didn’t immediately make me think of death. But I couldn’t explain why my heart sank in terror despite my attempt to brush it off. However, I carefully got out of bed and went to the parlour to ask what was happening.
My brother told me that she said he had passed away. I said, “From Allah we are and to Him is our return,” knowing that after this, I wouldn’t return to eating my yam and that it would be a long night.
This was the only thing I had the strength to do. While I watched my younger siblings break into tears and the news spread to the rest of the world, I pretended to be strong. I wanted to be strong. I couldn’t wail like others. Despite being known as the emotional one in the house, I was unusually calm. I easily shed tears over the slightest pain, but I didn’t cry when I heard the news of my sister’s husband’s death, a man who had loved and treated us well.
Later, I realized it had been three to four months since I last saw him physically. I had been studying in my first year of master’s at university, and due to my health issues and other reasons, I couldn’t visit his house.
Afterwards, I realized I had let many memories of him slip away due to forgetfulness. When the announcement of his death came, I struggled to recall even his appearance. I don’t know if this is a form of betrayal. However, after time had somewhat eased our loss, I began to feel a little bereaved. At least I remembered that he fervently supported my writing and had confidence in my ability to succeed in the literary world.
Then, something gripped me. I felt hollow, like a bottomless abyss, suddenly doubting my ability to be the great writer he always praised. I felt like I had betrayed him. I couldn’t shed a tear, only once, and it was when I went to console my sister, and she expressed gratitude to her siblings for being there. Now, my dreams felt hollow, no longer worth pursuing. He called me “our writer” with delight in his eyes and pride in his voice.
However, perhaps I didn’t break down at his death news because I’ve learned to be a pillar for my family to lean on. Maybe I knew that showing blatant grief would break us all. But this death arrested me unexpectedly, making me exhibit a composure that felt real when it was just a mask. It stole my reason to pray consciously for him despite him being a loved one. It reinforced the reality of death as our eventuality and the need to move on, which I tried to do, perhaps too early.
However, I know the fatality of my emotions. Or perhaps I’d changed as a human being, embarrassed to be perceived as emotional, and had become so cruel and cold in this December harmattan because I’d been accused in the past by people I loved of being too emotional. Ever since maybe I’d subconsciously vowed never to show weakness in the face of adversity. Whatever it may be, now I know that I may never forgive those who have accused me of being too emotional because they’ve essentially succeeded in making me a little less compassionate and merciful.
And if this is just one of those things death does to people – causing them to evolve – then I’ve seen such change in my sister. After spending a month in her house during the mourning period, I saw her sometimes hiding her tears as she remembered her now late husband and sometimes reaching for her phone to place a call to her husband to ask for the location of something she couldn’t find in the house before she remembered he was no more. I’ve since noticed new things about her. She would hide her phone underneath the bed every night when she was about to sleep and ask if I did the same with my phone. “My husband always did that to keep away from robbers in case of a break-in,” she would look at me and say. I didn’t know what to tell her.
She cooked spaghetti differently from how we cooked in our house before she was married. She would say, “The foaming top of the ogbono soup must disappear before it’s ready to be eaten.” She did other things I’ll call strange, only because her husband did them. Sometimes, they were against my liking, but I reasoned that perhaps the death of a loved one altered us in ways I could not comprehend. Maybe she held on to those things, even though they sometimes felt strange – a museum of special memories of him that were quickly within reach.
Though I was numb for days after his death, it wasn’t until recently that I was able to pray for him consciously. I hope I’ll pay his rightful due to him, my fervent supporter. May Allah have mercy on him, amin.
Sa’adatu Aliyu is a writer from Zaria. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Literature at Ahmadu Bello University, where she also works as a lecturer at the Distance Learning Centre. Her writing interests include Prose fiction and International politics. She can be reached at Saadatualiyu36@gmail.com.
