If you have not suffered or seen suffered from leukaemia, you might understand what about to say.

Na so I cucuma, put everything in a story (movie script) don't even know who to sell it to. Am not really too interested in how much I will generate from the story (though am interested) but more interested in seeing that this message is passed to every family. Do read the ending part of the story, but if you know anyone who can make the story sell in the market, please let me know. Then you will appreciate the beauty of this story.

..........,........................................................................
I had woken up the next morning, confused about the whole thing. Obioma had been at my place at midnight and in the morning, I couldn't remember how we parted ways after that contact. So, I went to the hospital that morning, where I was told that Obioma had passed on just before midnight and her parents were on the way to come and take her things home and she was in the morgue. For a moment, I stood dumbstruck-- more confused than I had been earlier that morning when I had woken up. I asked the doctor to allow me into the morgue, where I saw Obioma, dead, her face looked contented even in death. It showed through all the cotton wools that was foiled through her nose and ears. I tried crying, but could not. Something greater than grief gripped me and it spread like chills through my head down to the rest of my body, dimming my vision for a while.

I remember walking absent minded towards the hospital exit gate. I locked myself up in the room for two days and a night, not picking any call, not eating any food, just drooling and grieving. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and not recognising the image that stared back at me. My hairs had folded into an untidy dread, my eyes red and my face a tad darker. It was then that I remembered that Obioma would not have been happy to see me the way I was. She believed that love would never make you cry but leave you smiling when you had every reason to grieve. She loved books so much, she loved love stories and had been the person who made me believe my love poems were beautiful because she would blush each time I wrote her a poem and even memorised most of them. She took me round a psychoanalysis of them that there was a consistent pattern in them of always redefining love and talked about hope. She would say, "yes, love is supposed to be a harbinger of hope". Sometimes, I wish I could see her now and tell her how love has brought me despair. But then, I know she's happy where she is, I remember her words when her spirit visited "I am happy and okay, the pains are gone..." That's a Stan for certainty. Faith tells us about a heaven where there's no pain and every good person will get to rejoice there in God's glory. If Obioma is there and happy, then I should be happy too because what true love seeks ultimately is ultimate happiness of the partner.

Today, I will take some flowers to the place where Obioma was buried in the cemetery. I will tell her how much I miss her and how lonely the world feels without her, how difficult it is to hold on without her and every other thing I remember. And I hope to dream of her tonight as I have done each time I visit her grave. I see her smiling in a greenfield with buoyant trees and nightingales. She is always smiling at me and I smiling right back at her. This time, I hope that I am able to say I love you to her in person once again.

If there is something I have learnt from knowing Obioma it is the fact that nothing comes in between true lovers, not even death.