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Mom and Daughter: Diary Of The Last Time I Saw You Two –Femi Oluokun

Femi- Oluokun’s Mother would die without ever knowing her mother was dead. It so happened two weeks before, precisely it was eve of the torrential rainfall in July 2011, which devastated Lagos homes and other parts of the country that they had both fallen ill. And like the death that was to come, first it was Grandma. In the afternoon at quarter tone, a message from Ngozi, who resided in Grandma’s neighbourhood, reached Mother informing her of her mother’s illness. Upon this, a taxi arrangement was made to convey her to the hospital. Lying down on her side in bed like a foetus, Grandma was carried out of the house to the waiting taxi on the back of Dare, a stoutly carpenter who also lived in the neighbourhood. When the taxi engine roared into life, with Mother seated at the passenger side, and its tyres crunching past stones ofthe unpaved Borishade Street, Grandma did not see the tailor, in his opened shop, sitting on a long stool, in dirty white singlet, with a tape-rule around his neck like a snake, his feet mechanically peddling a Singer. She did not see the slim young girl in Ankara print, with a dark spot on her forehead, both hands and legs tattooed with laleé, bearing an aluminium tray carrying three cellophanes of dankwa, groundnut, and popcorn, which, without hands support, balanced on her head. She did not see the body of Moslem faithful standing in parallel rows, with both arms placed over chest, right arm over left, on the vast colourful mats in the mosque, with which two speakerphones fastened to its beam, observing zuhr (a quarter to two prayer). As the car negotiated onto asphalt, save for the bellow and grinding sound of metal, she did not see the train whistling past the rusted metal track of Isale-Oja at Agege, which she had watched past more than half a century before her body and bones were defeated by vestige of time at the backseat of the swiftly cruising taxi where she lay faced-up.

‘We’ll admit her’, the family doctor told Mother after close examination. ’It’s just a matter of old age. But not to worry, she would be fine’, he added, as if suddenly he realized the contradiction concealed in his second statement. And not even Mother would learn a week later the fear the doctor concealed. Dr. Bola long before studying Medicine at the university had been familiar to the family. Grandma was like a mother to him. The former and his mother, before she long died, were friends since the Forties, and their children, growing up in the same neighbourhood, had all attended the same primary school. Looking into Mother’s gloomy face he said ‘I should check you, too Sisi Abike’. Mother’s blood pressure (bp) was at an altitude of 120. She was advised to take a bed. She declined, saying, ‘I’ll just manage doc’.

She managed a night. At dawn, on Sunday, the heavy downpour that was to last until night began, with its cold penetrating her marrow. Rather than worry about own degenerating state of health she bickered herself about visiting her mother. ‘You should rest mom’, I told her, ‘besides it raining and tomorrow is almost here’. That night, the storm intensified and the sky cracked with lightning followed by crumbling of thunder, and her cry from the bathroom reached me in my bedroom. Slumped. She was lying on the bathroom floor, helpless, trying to rise, grabbing at the water closet, the toilet seat, the tap pole, all in the bid to rise. I grabbed her arms, pulling her up close, so that I bore her weight, until she was erect again. It was for this reason that, before sunset the next day, she was placed on bed rest at the hospital. That made the two of them: mum and daughter.

But treatments offered by doctors only made matters worse. Tuesday morning I went with a loaf of freshly baked wheat bread and beans for her breakfast, and while packing plates she had used the previous day she said to me, ‘Thanks Femi’, pausing. ‘I want you to hold forth, take care of your family. Be Femi Oluokun’. Never could I understand what she had meant. Was she announcing her death? I protested. ‘No mom. Don’t say that now. Don’t give up on me. Not now, please’. It was the last time she talked.

Unimpressed by turn of event, five days after (of Mother’s) admission, my older brother, Yomi and I requested she be discharged. ‘It of no use Femi’, there’s no improvement, at all’, Yomi said after Mother’s health had degenerated. Now, her legs no longer carried her, plus her speech slurred. Incoherent. ‘Auntie mi, would you prefer to go back home, or elsewhere for further treatment?’ Yomi inquired from her. Yomi, now eldest of Mother’s four sons following the death of Kunle, who died after a brief illness in 1999, like the latter (when he used to be alive) addressed Mother by that name: Auntie mi. Perhaps, she had given birth to them at quite a young age. Or perhaps it was generational, because she also addressed her mother in that manner, too. And so did Grandma her own mother, whom I never met. Thus, they say went the chain, save, of course, for Jide and I who chose the more appropriate word of Mom. Ten minutes before he posed the question to Mother, in her ward, awaiting her response in a nod or a shake of head, Yomi, a pragmatist, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly had asked the doctor,‘but she was even in a better condition when brought than now, wasn’t she?’ he queried in the doctor’s office. ‘Since there’s no improvement we will like to take her home’, he requested. His pain was understandable. Save for air of diplomacy, he didn’t have a twisted habit of not calling things by their names.

Mother knew she was losing it this time, so she was positive. She nodded. And both mother and daughter were discharged. It had all come to this during a check-up four years before she died. Mother had been diagnosed of diabetes, an abnormal state characterized by deficient insulin, by excess sugar in the blood and urine, and by thirst, hunger, and loss of weight. ‘You should adhere to these diets strictly’, the doctor had told her after running a list of unsavoury foods. ‘Forget rice, eba, amala, for now’. And that she did with great effort for a few months, afterwards she returned to her regular diet in hope that all was well, not until it had led to a partial stroke that heated afternoon at the hospital where I began to pack her bag, dirty dishes, and, from under the hospital pillow, her Bible. ‘Mom shall we?’ I said, notifying her of my readiness. She was sitting at the edge of her bed, head bowed, not answering, until a nurse came in wheeling a chair. Then she looked up, first glancing at the nurse, at Yomi, then me, with eyes a tearful.

Five days before she was discharged, Adeola, my wife and I would take turns like workers doing shift. I would visit in the mornings before resumption of work and visit at nights after close of work. Whenever I did that, Adeola, who at the time was nursing Anjola, our daughter, would fill in for afternoons. Because Mother and her mom had been in separate private wards, until the former lost it, I would feed her and return to her mother, doing same. It was arduous. One Wednesday night, during one of my visits, a nurse told me how Mother, the previous evening, fell in her room. ‘She went to see Mama downstairs’, she said, ‘and she returned to her room, but when I went in to give her medicine I just saw her on the floor’. From that day onward, she never walked again. The nurse added that she must have spent over thirty minutes with her mother. And that was the last time she saw her.

Grandma, for her part, wasn’t making any progress either, so it was agreed that the frail looking Grandma all bone and leathery skin returned back home, too in care of Dapo (the late Kunle’s son), my nephew and Daniel, a titular cousin. So it was that Yomi and I dropped her off, at her home that evening, before going back to the hospital to pick Mother. The neighbours and hood she took no notice of during her departure must have marvelled at her arrival. They may have thought her immortal, as they stood by in groups whispering to themselves when she disembarked from the car. She had probably been friends to some of them great grandparents’. Iya pupa, as she was fondly called because of her fair complexion, which even the years couldn’t blemish, in the neighbourhood was a woman of many parts: teacher and politician, mother of eight and a widow of a police Inspector, (my Grandfather, whom my mother barely knew). Back in the early eighties when I was just a boy, a little boy, like a regent she held court in her house. People would bring before her from domestic to land matters that she arbitrated. When there were no dispute resolutions, she and a couple of friends, men and women who have long died would play ayo olopon. This game was often peppered with conversation that was, at least to me, then, uninteresting. They spoke a score of sentences in proverb. Among the elders, however, it was said to be the palm oil with which words are eaten. That I learnt, many years later, upon becoming a man. In some of her teachings and folklores when we were boys, she forbade us refer to snake at night. She would call it ground thread. Besides holding court and lore, Grandma was Pa Obafemi Awolowo’s, sweetheart, politically. The election of 1979 had her house whitewashed in Awolowo’s faces. In my child’s eye, I remember how Awo’s poster and that of an opposite neighbour, who was clearly for -former President-Shehu Shagari, eyeballed one another. History account has it that Awolowo lost, though arguably, but for her, undoubtedly, she lived life to its fullest. But there’s a steep price for old age, or maybe life itself. It comes with its own misery. She had hers. Of the eight children, many years before her death, she was survived by two: Uncle Segun (Gbenga’s dad) and Mother. And it was in this house of memories past that she would end this misery. ‘Take care of her’, Yomi,at the back of the wheel, told Daniel who disappeared into the house with her on his back, in the manner Dare had done her a week earlier. ‘Make sure she eats’. I never saw her again.

Mother, for her part, was home under my family caring hands. During this period at home sympathizers’ advice was endless. Try allopath, homeopaths, physiotherapies- and over that time- all branches of the medical and alternative therapy arts had been consulted.

Dapo and Daniel kept fate with the task of looking after Grandma. So it was that one night, one day after she had been lying in her own bed shrinking, turning into a foetus that Daniel was preparing her a cup of tea to drink with bread that a plate shattered on the kitchen floor of Mother’s home. Their homes were four kilometres apart though, the incident that occurred, rather puzzling, bridged the gap. In incoherent words, Mother, who at the time I was spoon-feeding pap for dinner, asked me to check what went wrong. Pool of China splinters scattered about the concrete floor. And it was unexplainable how it broke. No one was in the kitchen, nothing could have warranted it. I made to inquire from Adeola who was sitting on a sofa in the parlour breast feeding Anjola,in her arms, while engrossed in a feature clip of victims of the deluge, whose kitchenware were bobbing in flood, and cars almost drowned to their windows on a weekly night TV show. ‘Was it you who broke the plate?’ I asked. ‘No’, she replied without looking my direction. ‘Come and see’, she said, drawing my attention to the flood victims on TV. And without transition, she added, ‘What happened?’ She managed to have said all sentences in three seconds. I returned to Mother unable to explain the enigmatic account when my phone rang. It was Daniel. ‘Brother Femi’, he said, pausing as if for dramatic effect. ‘Mama is dead’.

I couldn’t betray my eyes and face, emotions and surprise of revealing it to Mother. And so it was that before she, Mother died less than two weeks after no one dared tell it. It was a secret whispered only in corners of the house. On one account, it almost came to the open. Three days after Grandma was buried, a sympathizer was offering his condolences to Mother, Yomi pricked him clandestinely. Wittingly, I interpreted it to Mother as death of an aged neighbour. Though, all of these wouldn’t have mattered, if not for her ailment, more so, we feared mostly the bond between the two. They were so emotionally attached to one another. So inseparable in life, much as it would be in death, and as these thoughts formed, I managed to say ‘She would here’ as I hung up the phone on Daniel. Her brow furrowed. Inquisitive. ‘It’s Olu, (a friend) wants to know how you’re faring, and says I should greet you’. I lied.

Minutes after Daniel told me, he had called Gbenga, Yomi, and they, in turn, informed other family members. So it was that three hours later, having put Mother to sleep, Dapo walked in as if his presence validated the news, followed several minutes after by Daniel, a lad at its wits end of what-am-I-to-do, and lastly entered, on my phone, Gbenga, my older cousin’s, call in London urging me to play the-brother-role-down-there in order to forestall epidemic outbreak.Dapo, Daniel, and I set forth. The cloud of the breezy night was starry thatit showed no sign of rain. It was11:06 P.M.

Inside the bulb lighted room, in bed, laid the corpse like a sleeping newborn old woman, and on a metal chair, with which Daniel had sat, tending her, four hours past, by the bedside was a mug of forgotten tea. She would hold up her fingers in the shape of a cross, pointing them at wherever we moved in the room, I thought. And so I crossed myself. My crew watching me followed suit: each in crocked fingers crossed themselves, too. ‘This was the tea I was giving her before she stopped breathing’, Daniel pointed out, breaking the grave silence. Because we had come on purpose, on our way we had bought cotton wool, a packet of incense, and brought from home, some of the gloves pack the nurse who changed Mother’s catheter uses. Even so, with the gloves on, with which we stuffed the wools in her ears, nostrils, and mouth, a touch of her foreleg felt as cold as ice. Rigor mortis, however, hadn’t set in. Done, we switched off the light, leaving behind thirty glowing sticks of 999 dazzling like fireflies at strategic corners of the room where they hung, and smoking. Did we just embalm her?

The over-night embalmers did a fine work. Cholera didn’t break out the next day, for the neighbourhood slept unknowing a dead sleeps among them, and so it was that grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren all gathered at her home awaiting the ecclesiastical delegates. It was her burial, and in pulling resources Gbenga and Toun, his wife wired money, Auntie Alaba, Grandma’s daughter-in-law (widow of Uncle Gbadebo) and children also did a good showing, Yomi, cash down, and I, too furnished my widow’s mite. Not like Mother had planned to bury her mum, though. She would roll out the drums, ‘It’d be the talk of the town’, she would say. And yet, in contrast to Tai Solarin’s stolidity of ‘how can I lose my mother and lose my money’, we made big feast. No drums.

Because I was involved in the preparation of the burial ceremony, Adeola would fill in for me back home. ‘You and Dapo should go get gravediggers. Daniel and I will go buy the coffin now’, Yomi said at Grandma’s home.’ And don’t forget you still have to buy the goat too, hurry Femi time is running out’. We left. At home, Mother had only had two spoonful of oatmeal (no sugar, no cream), and she wouldn’t take another despite pleadings from Adeola and sympathizers’ who came visiting. It took a fat lie that my editor wanted a story on his desk at noon to excuse myself from home that morning at eight o’ clock. Mother, though not a journalist, undoubtedly understood what a deadline was. I had been twice, at different times, surcharged for failing to meet deadline during my second employment at a magazine, and she remembered how pained I was to see that deducted from my meagre salary, which barely supported me for twenty days in a month. She won’t allow for it again, so considerate she had let me go.

It was past noon now, and the gravediggers had finished digging, the goat, from its stake, been led away by the butcher to the slab, and the casket laid beside the washed and neatly dressed corpse. Ecclesiastical delegates in cassock had arrived. All was set. The gravediggers like pallbearers shouldered the coffin followed by the funeral procession to the gravesite. As she was committed to the ground following ‘dust to dust’ recitation of the priest my phone rang. It was Adeola. ‘She wouldn’t eat’, she said. ‘I don’t’ know what’s wrong with her, she’s just crying’. ‘Tell her I’ll be home soon’, I replied, and hung up.

I returned home. She ate a little more, not quite impressive, though. ‘Like a baby learning how to eat’, Auntie Yinka, a longstanding friend of hers, would say of her eating disorder. She took her drugs and slept off. I returned to the party and two hours after the entire family was back home again. The house was full of children. She was awake and must have considered it a surprise to see everyone, although they were the sons and daughters of her sons only, with the exception of Jide’s children who hadn’t come to the burial. Yomi and I went to her room, a bottle of unfinished beer in Yomi’s right hand, she looked up as if awaiting news, then she pointed at the beer bottle in his hand, and ‘Do you want to drink?’ he asked her jocularly. ‘Femi, see your mom wants to drink beer’. She laughed. We all did. And that was the last time she laughed.

Less than two weeks before she died, ten days after her mother’s burial, we finally agreed she sees a physiotherapist. ‘The guy is good’, Auntie Yinka told me over phone, while I was at work. ‘He has handled several cases of such successfully’. Yomi had been home with the latter so it was he who directed that my consent be sought. Adeola prepared Mother’s backpack, and she was wheeled off, in her chair, to Yomi’s waiting car. She never returned home again.

I visited her the next morning. And while I was in her company, she looked at me with so much pity as if it were me in that bed. I told her she would be fine again, talk again, and even eat her favourite meal again: amala with ewedu. But it didn’t interest her; instead her face was gloomy, in contrast to that face of love, tender laughing eyes that used to be full of joy and life. It was sad seeing her in that state. I left for work at noon. That was the last time I saw her.

It’s painful to lose loved ones to death, indeed, but God has been merciful. For Mother, she witnessed celebrations of her son’s fiftieth birthday, another’s house warming, and yet another’s grand wedding and the christening of great grandchildren. Grandma, for her part, in 1996 fulfilled the Book doubly, ‘Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace is unto Israel’ (Psalm128:6). The birth of Lara, Dapo’s daughter ushered her in to the graceful fold of a great-great grandmother.

If you were alive this day, you would be ninety-eight today, and it is to this end I dedicate this piece to you. Happy Birthday, Grandma.
Victoria Ibironke Borishade (March 3, 1915 –July 15, 2011)


In saving the best for last, let me also especially congratulate a worthy and special woman in my life, Adeola, my darling wife who celebrates her birthday today to good health, love, and life. Happy Birthday, honey.

PS:
Apologies to my older brothers whom I referred, in this piece, on first name basis without the prefix: ‘brotha’. As Africans, especially of Yoruba race, I’m biologically unfit to address you in that nature.I knows. But it’s been my practice, not as a mark of disrespect, since years of writing to writein first name terms even if I were referring to colossus. And you folks: (the late) Kunle, Yomi, Jide, Gbenga and Toun (sister-in-law) are no exception.

Thus, bear with me. I need not be reminded that while I was teething, learning to read beginning with ABC, chanting three plus three is six and six plus three is nine, you all at one time, individually, during those years, were either driving Mother’s car, solving principles of Accounting in class assignment, or playing football in the school team.

Oluokun, a journalist writes from Agege, Lagos State, Nigeria. He was nominated for the Nigeria Media Merit Award, NMMA in 2012. He can be reached via delefemi_oluokun@yahoo.com

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