Life and Death
Here we go. Three different stories with similar story lines and two poems.
Enjoy!
The call came when she least expected it, on a Wednesday morning, one of the three days she had chosen to stay home. It was now a routine; four days at the hospital and three days at home. Not that she minded. Her first son was finally coming home after being away for five years, studying. Journalism and Photography had built him into a man. John always knew what was good for him.
"Hello?" She said, anticipating his voice.
"Mrs. Effiong?" The voice wasn't John's.
"Yes," she replied, confused.
"I'm calling from St. Lucy's Hospital."
"What happened?"
"Please, get here ma."
Simi Effiong was never a career woman. She had always been a stay at home mum. She loved it - the fragrance of her flower garden when she tended to it in her comfortable tee shirt and jeans, the scent of books when she arranged her husband's study.
She was twenty-one, dark eyed and slender when she married Anthony, a bartender who loved to read.
She pulled into the hospital tired. She had known the moment the call dropped that her husband was gone. Eight months of going to and fro the hospital and watching him slip farther away each time should have prepared her.
Hell! Cancer diagnoses alone should have prepared her.
She barely managed to hold back the sobs as she followed the nurse into his private ward.
"Mum?"
John wrapped his arms around his mother and stared hard at the corpse of the man he called father for twenty-five years. That moment, he realised that the only thing left for him to capture was his last blink.
Not to a slow song
Nor to a loud music
Like I often do
But to someone
Just sitting in quietness
No sound
No movement
Only silence
And the person's voice
His child was deteriorating, and there was nothing he could do.
He had not wished to marry early, but had come to accept and love his wife. It baffled him, how he could love someone and yet, loathe the source of their happiness, the reason for their inner peace. Maybe it wasn't love; maybe he was just looking for something to hold on to.
He wished he could love his wife and child right. He was tired of trying to explain things. Talking wasn't working any longer, so he would take action. He would start by taking his son to the hospital; consequences be damned. He was the boy's father and had to do right by him. His family wouldn't stop him this time. He was tired of their patience and unending prayers that never worked. He was tired of hope.
His child sat on his lap. He didn't mind that the boy flinched at his touch. Someday, he would grow and understand that a father did what he had to do for his children's survival.
“What's wrong with my son?” he asked again.
The doctor looked up. “Your son is schizophrenic and has reached the state psychosis. There's nothing much I can do for him. He needs to be in a mental health facility.”
The man stood, staring at the house he called home. Where would he start to explain to his wife that their child is schizophrenic? That their only child would have to live on drugs for the rest of his life? That he was likely to completely lose his mind someday? He stood there and wondered.
And sadness
And worry
And fear
But I've made peace with myself
Also with life
Death even
I know it's bound to come
I don't mind
I don't fear it
...can't an.ymo.re...tired... li.ving
I typed with shaky fingers. The sound of the touch pad broke the silence of the room. I ignored the broken words. My vision blurred; a single tear slipped and dropped on the screen.
The phone vibrated. My attention was drawn to an incoming message at the notification bar. It was from my Aunt Adaugo. 'Your mother wants to see you,' the message read. I deleted it and went back to my keyboard, but I couldn't type anymore.
Why did you take me to the stinky whorehouse in the first place? Why did you get in the bunk with me? - I had asked my mother when I turned fifteen. I asked those questions not because I wanted the answers, I knew them. I asked them because I wanted her to experience the same pain as me. It didn't matter that she took me there to protect me from the blows of my angry father. All that mattered was that she had climbed into thatthe too narrow bunk with me and failed to hold me. I blamed her for the fall that made me lose my ability to stand upright without aid. I couldn't forgive that, even when I learned that my father, believing we fled to my Aunt's house, had barged in and stabbed her five year old daughter, thinking it was me.
I wheeled my chair into the hospital reception area. The nurse on duty was not behind her desk. I shrugged and turned towards the long corridor leading to the private ward where my mother was resting in one of the rooms. There was a commotion inside the room at the far end. A nurse rushed out.
"You need to stay off this corridor, Madam," she said and ran past. The doctor came out then. With him were two nurses - one male, one female. I watched from my mother's room as the child was pushed past. The mother was held back.
"He's gone, Nnenna," my Aunt squeezed my shoulder.
The child had fallen off the small hospital bed. He had a migraine at midnight. The mother, knowing no other way to comfort him, climbed in and held him. She slept off and the child slipped.
The first time it happened, he had broken an arm which was wrapped in a cast, accompanied by a stern warning from the doctor. But the migraine had returned after two days and the confused mother did exactly the same thing. Difference was, the child never woke up.
I bit back tears and turned to watch my mother. I never understood how scared she must have been that night until now. I had spent sixteen long years, despising her and torturing myself. Her only crime was loving me too much and getting me to the only safe place she could find at the moment.
Few minutes ago, I was ready to end it all. I didn't think about how she would feel when she opened her eyes and realised I was gone. I never considered that I'd been hurting her all those years I refused to let her take care of me, or the possibility that when I left to live with my Aunt after I turned sixteen, my father's abuse was nothing compared to the pain she must have felt.
My unfinished suicide note made me mad now. I clasped her right her tightly, closed my eyes and silently willed the cancer away. I knew our lives would never be the same again. We both had something to live for.
What are your thoughts?
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