LOSS

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” – Thomas Campbell
The most persistent memory from my childhood is of a smell: a smell of rubber, gas, charred flesh and burning clothes – a memory from the day that changed everything.
***
We had just finished our morning devotion that Monday and I was lying on one of the brown chairs in our living room. My dad would ring a bell to wake us up and we would all assemble in the living room to pray, sing and listen to a Bible lesson. It always took me a while to get up from the chair to shower and get ready for school after devotion. I loved going to school but the process of waking up so early to commune with God before the day started was exhausting for me as a child so I had to take a rest first. Besides, it was still very early in the morning.

Then I heard a loud bang. Thunder, I thought. Suddenly my dad was breaking down the front door and there was commotion everywhere. The key to the front door had been missing for some time so we had been taking the back door in and out, but here was my dad breaking down the front door. Then I was barefoot downstairs, watching as a crowd gathered. I must have gone into shock. I had no idea how I’d gotten downstairs, and I couldn’t find any of my siblings. There was a fire in our flat. The bang I had heard was the sound of the gas cylinder exploding. My mum had gotten the cylinder on Friday and brought it home only to discover a leak when it was turned on. She left instructions with Grace, who had been on duty that weekend, saying that the cylinder was not to be used and that she would return it on Monday. There was no way to contact the gas people before then. We had used a kerosene stove throughout the weekend. When the other help, Ruth, returned early that Monday morning, Grace didn’t pass the information because they weren’t talking. Ruth, unaware of the danger, had put on the gas cylinder and tried to light the cooker. She died in the first blast. Grace survived the first blast but later died in the hospital. My dad had come out of the building smelling of burning rubber, putting out the fire on his shorts as he tried to explain what had happened to a crowd that seemed to be getting bigger every minute. I could see his lips move but I couldn’t hear him because I didn’t leave my spot. It wasn’t bright yet, I took comfort in the dark. There was something I could taste in my mouth: it was Fear. Fear gripped me and I could barely move. I’m not sure my dad even saw me as he walked past me. In movies, you sometimes see a scene with someone burning from head to toe, screaming and trying to fight the flames. It happened right in front of me. Everyone ran back trying to figure out who it was and how to put out the flames, shouting advice from a safe distance. It took me a moment to realise that it was mum. I stood glued to the spot, watching her burn. Then she was rolling around in the sand trying to put out the flames in the most macabre dance I have ever seen. I heard someone mention pouring water on her to put out the fire but the group of people who had now moved
closer to her advised against it as she was already in too much pain. The fire was eventually put out, my mum and dad were put in the back seat of our Peugeot car and a neighbour got into the driver’s seat. I went to stand by the car door and I saw both of them seated beside each other, and that smell hit me. Even after they were driven to the hospital I could still smell it. Meanwhile, people worked feverishly to keep the fire from spreading to other apartments. It was too late to save our apartment as well as the lifetime of memories and property my parents had worked for. My mum’s friend spotted me in the crowd and took me and my siblings to her house. We were already there before we realised that none of us had seen my baby brother and my cousin.
***
My mum’s older sister, Big Mummy, and my mum were very close. Big Mummy visited us very often and was there for every major event in our lives. She and my mum would often speak on the phone after the nine o clock news and sometimes my mum would fall asleep still talking to her. It was Big Mummy who came to move the family to Lagos. My parents needed to be taken abroad for medical attention, but there were no international flights from Abuja at the time so we had to go to Lagos first. In Lagos, hospitals were on strike. Eko Hospital, where my parents were taken, was understaffed because of the strike, and doctors had to get my mum in a stable condition before any more travelling could be done as she was in far worse shape than my dad. I remember Big Mummy saying it had taken a while to identify my mum when she saw her in the hospital, because of the severity of her burns. Some of the medication administered to my parents had expired, and this made Big Mummy furious when she found out. The last time I was close to my mum was during the flight to Lagos. We were not allowed to sit with her or my dad or my baby brother, who was found in the flat by firemen when they turned up. He was not as badly burned as my parents, but the wounds were severe for a one-year-old. My cousin was also found, and we all travelled together to Lagos.

Big Mummy was our rock. She had five kids to take care of, besides making sure our parents were treated properly. My mum kept asking for her children, yet when my brother was brought into her room to see her she refused to look at him. She was burned all over and in a lot of pain. She died before she could be sent abroad. I hear the moment she passed was spiritual. Big Mummy always shares the story of how she kept shouting, “I can see Jesus, His face is like the sun”. She had been in too much pain, and the only thing that kept her sane was the same recital of ‘Thank You Jesus’. They had no idea she was passing on. Her voice grew faint as she said, “I can see Jesus, His face is like the sun”. And very quickly she was gone.
***
My dad kept asking for his wife. Nobody was brave enough to tell him the truth. They eventually told him she had been taken abroad for treatment, as her case was critical, just to keep him calm. The day he died, it was unexpected. He had been responding to treatment and was lucid, having conversations with the people that came to visit him. He was lying quietly in bed one minute and the next he was agitated, calling my mum by name and asking her to open the door because he wanted to be with her. Present in his room at that time was a nurse who was born again, and she knew instantly that the door he was asking to be opened was no ordinary one. She asked for everyone to start praying and pleading with the unseen to keep the door shut, to prevent him from leaving. He kicked in the air like he was struggling to kick open that door and their voices grew even louder. “Dupe, please, don’t open the door,” they kept saying. “Dupe, remember your four children, close the door.” Their efforts were wasted. He passed away right before their eyes.
***
When I was a child, Saturdays often found my family at one wedding or another. I was little bride at many of these weddings, and very often I didn’t know who the couple was. I remember Aunty Fadekemi, though; she and her husband attended our church. I was a little bride at their wedding and she came to thank my parents afterwards. I had to sit between my parents and I remember dad and mum teasing the new couple about children and when they were going to start having some. They were all just joking around. Then my dad turned to my mum and said, ‘You, can you survive without me?’ And she replied with, ‘No o. We’re dying together. If you go, I go!’
***
‘Your parents have gone to heaven’ was how my uncles broke the news to us. I listened quietly, and then watched them leave as I took a bicycle, one of my cousin’s, for a ride, and I just rode around and around. I found myself riding to the back of Big Mummy’s huge compound, and my father’s mum was sprawled out on the grass, praying. ‘Yèmi Alice’, as she was called, was one of the first Christians in Idanre. She had also heard the news of my parents passing and there she was crying and rolling in the grass in prayer. I watched her for so long, without understanding what this meant. But inside of me I could feel it: our lives would not be the same again.
***
My parents were buried side by side in Idanre, their hometown in Ondo State. My dad was 35 and my mum was a few months shy of 34. Their coffins were brown, with their names, Caleb Ifemayowa Makinwa and Modupe Monica Makinwa, inscribed in gold. We moved into Big Mummy’s house in Ikoyi. She was the eldest of our aunts and had sent herself to school and also taken care of her siblings’ education. Dad’s siblings were not very involved in our lives after his passing, but we were blessed to have family members who cared for us and tried to do
right by my parents. We were young, but death had scarred us, including my baby brother. While the rest of us mourned brown suits and a funny overprotective mum, he had to grow up without any memories of them. Yèmi Alice died soon after. She was never the same after my parents’ death.
***
I was eight years old when mum and dad died. And life continued. Big Mummy became mummy. She was the sweetest woman but I knew better than to cross her. I couldn’t find closure. The tragedy that had befallen my family took on the form of a heavy cloak that hurt to carry around but that I couldn’t bear to take off for fear that I would fall apart without it. I had all these ‘adult’ questions but no one to ask. Where was God when that gas cylinder exploded? Dad had been active in the church and he wasn’t the type to act one way in public and another way at home. He had made sure we all took prayer, Bible and everything else seriously. So what was the purpose of religion if it could not even save its followers? We had just finished morning devotion when the tragedy hit. Where was the justice in that? Why did my dad follow suit after my mum passed, when he wasn’t terribly hurt like she was? Had he preferred to go with her rather than stay with us? Was I a burden to our extended family? Would we always be people to be pitied? How long would anything last before it was taken away from me? From being a bubbly, friendly child I became withdrawn and taciturn. From being the child who always came first in class, I went to the bottom of the class.

Source: http://sauta97..com.ng/2016/12/on-becoming-by-toke-makinwa-chapter-3.html

Cc: ijebabe, MissyB3, Fynestboi

hummm it not easy to lose both parent talkless of one. I know how it feels cos i also lost my dad at a young age

Why not continue the whole chapter here instead of opening new topic everytime. I think it will give u more view and thereby alot of people get to see ur blog.

My little cent though, but then what do I know.

enoqueen:
Why not continue the whole chapter here instead of opening new topic everytime. I think it will give u more view and thereby alot of people get to see ur blog.

My little cent though, but then what do I know.

Thanks for the Idea Ill do just that

#muah *kisses* if you dont mind

Is there no copyright on this book? Does the writer know you are doing this—putting her work out like this?

Chapter 4 please