Merry Christmas, my dear love
When the neighbours came in the morning bearing their condolences, their eyes filled with pity, their lips betraying disbelief, many had said that they had been expecting your jollof rice and chicken on Christmas morning.
As I reminisce, I remember Christmas eve having less of “Merry Christmas” and more of “Mamuyovwi, come and join me, let us cut this chicken,” with a knife in one hand, and your second hand playing several sets of tug of war with the thighs I held in place as you sliced, cut, and gisted about one thing or the other.
We placed matters between us, cutting right through the middle. Whenever we disagreed, each of us held to our own, splitting, but eventually ending up inside the same bowl. The thighs got washed, spiced, boiled and fried on Chrismas eve. You counted every single fried piece into a thermostat cooler that is kept in your room.
The main cooking happens on Christmas morning. By dawn, your eyes were already shut to smoke wafting from the large pot of jollof rice as you dug a wooden ladle dug into it. This happened in the backyard while my brother grated carrots and cabbage for coleslaw in the kitchen. My sister would later take food in fine china and aluminium bowls to several neighbours; met with cheers and little cash gifts at their door mouth.
But this Christmas is different. Yesterday makes it one month since I sat outside the ward at the hospital, staring at my palms severely bruised from holding on to hope. This time, holding on was numbing, and I know you felt it. It was one month ago that we knew you had decided to rest this Christmas.
as i dine with this rage within me. as i pour fear out of my eyes, and replace them with strength. as i saw your eyes at my first behold of beauty. as you searched into mine at your last behold of light.
When I learnt that Love is Strength, it was you that taught me while I floated in utero. And I came face to face with love when I opened my eyes.
Love is Duty — I learnt that from you too watching you toil provide, care sacrifice and never hold on to so much just so you could love. Christmas is one love story that you have told perpetually, much that everyone has their own version of it: hot food and cool drinks on Christmas mornings, phone calls filled with laughter and jest to distant friends and relatives, cloth and gifts of foodstuff, your smile that broke out of your mouth to show off your diastema.
On some days memories of these things stay ahead of me, as a run after them with an unending longing to hold on to you again. But you have held on to your own, and I have held on to mine. And this time, we have to have separate bowls.
I told everyone at your wake keep that we, your children, had inherited your strength. I don't know if they understood that, but I know how I have felt in recent weeks: as I find nostalgia hidden in conspicuous places around the house; as we find your grace in hearts where you had sown; as I speak to your daughter, my sister, her voice ringing with your same excitement; as I watch life stretch out into nothingness like a desert and confront my resolve to ensure that my footsteps leave an imprint of love — like yours.
When I learnt that Love is Courage, you were already gone. But I learnt it from you. You believed that millennia ago, a man divinely conceived was born in Bethlem and grew to become one who bore a cross from the city of Jerusalem to the outskirts of Calvary for the salvation of billions of humans. This underserving show of courage that I never understood, and never bothered to follow. However, you showed this same courage, holding on to us even after our father’s death, a needless perseverance filled with love. Oh, how I wish you had stayed! There was so much I had promised to make you enjoy. But like my older brother says in his song, you’re in heaven now, in your glory with the angels watching over us.
My conviction in life borders on the moral and just, and has seldom relied on any sort of religion or spirituality — an idea you were close to accepting but constantly resisted while you were here.
“Mamuyovwi, why didn’t you go to church?” And when I told you I didn’t believe in it, you’d say, “You better pray, you better know your God. It is for your own good.” We always resigned, as you put yours in yours, and I put mine in mine.
Well, Merry Christmas, mummy. I am going to church this morning. For my own good. In a bid to find that spiritual conduit that you did. And maybe I will be able to feel you stronger, sharing in the glory that you have always felt. I still feel nothing now, but I am trying.
i believe the only thing that would have been befitting, fine girl, is if you had gone to church today and danced with us into praises and thanksgiving. but somehow, we have to accept that you have gone into the night?
I am writing to you because I feel you, hear you and bask in your presence. I have not had cause to pause and wonder where you are. It is weird and inconsistent with the fact that I miss you and long to hear your voice.
But you are here. Present.
I miss you so much.
25th December 2022
Ikorodu, Lagos
