"My Promo-Mentors Writing Challenge" 2014- "A YEAR THAT USHERED ME INTO A CHAOTIC ADULTHOOD (Memorable experiences)

Sometimes I take a look at my the past, and some events still sticks to the platelets of my minds like it was yesterday, needless to say these events really made shifts into the man I became today, however these experiences clustered into a certain year, 2014 and they really happened so fast I cannot tell of one without revealing the other, in a nutshell the year started with me as an immature boy, and it ended up making me a broken and grown up man, which of course still follows me around and hangs unto me everyday of my life.

It was on the January 2014, in Lagos Nigeria. I had just gone to work,and it was a sultry afternoon, I was working on erecting a banner in my place of work, when I suddenly slipped and fell off the ladder, I smashed my ankle on the earthen floor, I Winched in pain, the tears were running and the cry was inept, I couldn't feel my body, it was like I've been stabbed in so many places, in a jiffy my coworkers came and carried me up high and took me to the hospital , I was suppose to be going to college in September, what if I end up crippled? What I had injured my spinal cord? all these thoughts flickered into my mind, the pain began to boil, I hadn't even spend more than three hours of agony in the hospital, when my colleagues brought my phone as my leg was strapped up in a sling in the hospital bed, and when I answered with pain in my voice, I was asked if I was Joseph, I sad yes, then the speaker told me, they just brought my father to the hospital, and he has suffered a cardiac arrest, it was like a jolt on the chest, I knew my father was hypertensive but could it have gotten it cardiac arrest?

It was like life had left my soul, he was 52, how could he die so early?

I jumped out of the bed and I crashed with a thud on the floor, when my colleagues heard the crashing they rushed in, I didn't even ended the call, I was weeping Like a baby. I couldn't even answer their questions, it came Luke thunderstorm, I had no answer, so they picked up the phone and redialed the users who told them it was my father, and that he just passed away just a minute ago, I saw the expressions on their face, I knew he was dead, they had to hold me down to the bed while I broke and struggled and wailed at the top of my voice, I was 19, I wasn't ready to be without a father and with my sprained ankle, I was patched up in bandages and given crutches, since I could not stay in the hospital any longer,

I was suffering physical and emotional pain, believe me, if you never felt this there was no pain bigger than this combined before I got home, my mother was already numb, she couldn't even speak,the tears were trickling down her face, and I was even worried if she wouldn't lose her senses as a result of the trauma.
We buried him after a month but even on the burial day, I saw his lifeless body it was Like he was there, it felt like a bad dream, he couldn't just die, another set of tears were resumed, and my brother, my mum and I took turn to cry and weep loudly again, the memories made us hurt.

I couldn't put my father's death behind me, and just after two months, my mum went down with stroke, the doctor said that as a result of her hyper blood pressure which was at 250/150 she was struck with stroke which damaged organs like her urinary tract, her ability to control her leg and hand, and also bend her mouth to one side, which made her speech distorted and unable to speak something meaningful.

I'd never heard of stroke before I never knew anything as devastating as that existed.

Once more i was shattered again, I didn't go a single day in 2014 smiling, I've practically lost my family in just a year and my eyes were fast watering, I hadn't enough money to pay her hospital bills and I had to always crowdsource her fatal sickness to people who knew Me, so they could give me money to take care of her.

I had to bathe her, clothe her and feed her because she couldn't move, she urinated through a catheter, so I had to always get rid of urine every twelve hours.

It continued for six months and the doctor told me she may never walk again, I had to abandon my dreams of going to college. It's however been four years now, although she can practically walk with crutches, and do a few things I still tend to wonder, what my father hadn't died will my mother have fallen victim of being a zombies who is a ghost of her former self, will I be graduating from college already, would I have achieved a few things those years I was in the hospital? and the experiences and trauma that haunted me still lingers in me, 2014 pratically made me a a broken man, and here I am narrating my experience.

Thank you for reading

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