Welcome, Guest: Register On Nairaland / LOGIN! / Trending / Recent / New
Stats: 3,143,185 members, 7,780,292 topics. Date: Thursday, 28 March 2024 at 11:47 AM

A Few Things I Learned From My Dad - Literature - Nairaland

Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Literature / A Few Things I Learned From My Dad (297 Views)

Someone Gave My Dad This Book As A Gift. / What Are Things I Should Know As A Newbie In Writing? / Four Things I Learnt From Boarding A Bus This Morning (2) (3) (4)

(1) (Reply)

A Few Things I Learned From My Dad by Nobody: 5:17pm On Mar 01, 2021
Today makes it five years since my Dad passed on. He died about the same time I was through with my day at work. When I was informed I simply picked up and left for the hospital without anyone noticing anything. Not many people where at work at the time to even notice any changes on my countenance or demeanour, if I had any. It was in the bus on my way home, while listening to Anathema's "One Last Goodbye", that tears dropped from my eyes. I shook a bit as well, which must be the only time the passengers beside me would've noticed that something was amiss. At the hospital, after speaking briefly with my mother, elder sisters, I proceeded upstairs to see his face before he was taken to the morgue. Because he'd died after days in a coma, he looked like he'd been, days prior to his death, save the freshness and breathing associated with life. Nothing dramatic happened when I saw his body, I just moped at him for a while, touched his hands, and then let go. Details of the rest you'd find in - ONE LAST GOODBYE https://madukovich./2016/03/07/one-last-goodbye/.


I didn't show so much emotion the entire time of preparations to and on the day of his burial and funeral, even as my siblings and mum, including some of my nieces and nephews were all beside themselves with grief. At that moment, it looked like I'd recover faster than they would from mourning, now five years after it feels like the reverse is the case. I have come to find a huge gaping hole in my heart after he left, that I didn't reckon would be an issue for me, in the event of his passing. This is because our relationship couldn't be said to be that much of a close one for much of the early years in relation to the latter years, but I guess the wound is deeper because we must've been there for each other on a more less peripheral level. Which will explain why when it seemed others had gotten over him, I'm still yet to do same, and in writing this, I might just be attempting to achieve what other members of my family had long achieved.


A Rebbe once likened memories of the dead as a hole in one's living room, that was dug after ones loved one died, of which the bereaved fell into quite often in the early days of mourning because s/he hasn't gotten used to the presence of the pit, but less frequently after a while because s/he's now used to it. In my case, it feels like I'm still in the stage of consistent frequent falling, even when I think I should've gotten over (used to) it. Maybe it's because I've begun to appreciate my dad more, now that he's gone than when he was much around. It definitely is true what they say about one not knowing what one's got till it's gone. Interestingly, this is not in the things he said to me while he was alive, rather in how he lived his life. It seems like he died just so I can get the message, and surely I'm getting it in doses, and the fact that I keep falling in that pit means there's still more of those messages to get, as I face instances in my life that require the dose to be unveiled for consumption, for the time. Lemme now go on to reveal other things you might not have known about my dad.


Yes, my dad was also a Pastor besides running his business. He was the kind of pastor that didn't live off the church, in fact he ploughed into it, reaping only the goodness that it brought into the lives of the members of the mission. That tradition we have continued to this day, such that the leader of the Assembly draws no salary or any form of compensation, rather invests his time and money to its growth. But he wasn't just a Pastor for the sake of it, he was one whose scales he didn't adjust fraudulently for his own benefit, in his business. There was this one time, that one of his trucks, driven by a cousin of his disappeared under some murky circumstances, for which had it not been for his good name, he would've been in enough trouble to wreck his business. He found favour in the sight of the owner of the goods he was hauling, that they both patiently worked to get to the end of what might've happened. Even when his cousin's sincerity became doubtful, he took responsibility for him, saved him from gaol, though he was never to work for and with him again.


My father bore no grudges, though he noted the wrongs done him, and relayed it to us children by way of advising us to not do same to our fellow man. He was just like a child in how he related to those who'd wronged him or vice versa, as by the next time they'd meet, he'd simply carry on like nothing had happened between them. When I came of age, and I would be angry with a particular action he took, he'd have moved on by the time he returned in the evening from work, while I was still brooding. Such was the heart of that man. His death afforded me the opportunity to meet with so many people he'd grown up with, when I encounter them in the village, for one occasion or the other. On many of these occasions, his life was peeled to me like an onion, of his selflessness, kindness, loyalty and empathy (of which I have written about), among others. Of course, I also got to hear about how he used his burly figure to intimidate those who crossed him, in his defence he'd come like Gideon from a place that not much thought was given, lost his mother and siblings, named Obiadi, meaning that finally the "Obi" (central building in an Igbo homestead, which could also mean that the lineage having not being wiped out, will now continue) is now present, but for "security" reasons, his father remarried in an effort not to put all his eggs in one basket.


My dad had no regrets, not that he didn't make mistakes, but those mistakes didn't make him. He never dwelled on them, and simply moved on, even in the cases where he didn't correct them. In his last years and days, I would pay attention to all of his words to hear him express regrets for any of the path he took, but I never caught him, rather he relished all of his experiences, both positive and contrary ones. He laughed at his failures, for instance, in every Igbo home, children of my time were told the tale of the Biafra war, many times it was a tale of doom and gloom, but not with my dad. He relayed the story in comic fashion, especially of his part as a conscript on the Biafran side, of Biafra's fumbling and wobbling. The only time the story of Biafra was sad for him was when he talked about the comrades in arms he lost during the war. Even his marriage to my mother (who was in Research & Production, RAP in those calamitous days) was related to the war, and his heroics, which I think must have served as one of the knots that held that marriage till death separated them, was one for which romantic blockbusters are made. I did have a regret for him though, as it was his intention to write a book, and he often spoke about doing so, unfortunately it didn't come to me to help him actualize that dream.


Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo Da Vinci


My dad personified simplicity. Like my brother he had a fashion sense, but unlike him, he was never in and with the rave of the moment. He understood that adorning the pig with ornaments didn't make the pig anything more than it is. He lived simply, and just like I have now learnt to live, wouldn't eat anything harder than an overripe banana. My dad taught me to take things easy with life, and that whatever was yours, will by just any means find it's way to you, and by inference not, if it wasn't meant for you, regardless of your effort in getting it. Hence you'd never find him agitated, or anxious, and it is for his sake that I made Matthew 6:25-34 (which I can freely recite off by heart, with inflection), one of my best part of the bible. I know how you might begin to think my dad lazy because of the above, but far from it. This man was the most hardworking man I ever knew, and in deed it was the fact that he worked that hard in the years after I was born that we kids didn't have so much of a relationship with him. He was the typical PROVIDER & PROTECTOR of his nuclear, as well as extended family, and I say this with all sense of responsibility, only that I would need another blog post to expatiate on those.


My dad lived free, he had no attachment to anything, the loss or withdrawal of which could've caused him pain, the likes of which he wouldn't recover from within a few hours. On the days he'd offend me, I'd imagine getting hurt just so he could be in pain as well, but when I remember that he could only feel pain for as long as he'd allow himself, I'd simply perish the thought. This attitude of his sometimes made him look like someone that didn't care, but he always seemed like one who was pursuing an ideal that was beyond the scope of our space and time, while at that, without being aloof. He understood that whatever he had, he could easily lose, and can rise, and fall, and rise again (or fall again) but he never went into depression or rued the good times, in terms of adversity. In this regard, when my dad developed his heart condition, that led to a stroke many years later, he never lost his sense of humour, even when his business went under (like we say in Nigeria, that most people are just an illness away from losing everything). His demeanour never waned when we moved from a more spacious home, to a much less spacious one for financial reasons. Fortunately for him, most of us were gradually becoming financially capable by the time things begun to go south for him, and it was regrettable that he missed by just a few days the opportunity to live in the house that we had built in his name for him, away from the one he'd built for us in the country, as we hadn't planned for him to retire in the latter.


Once my father had played his role teaching us the way to go as kids, he practically left us to our devices as to how we intended to run our homes, and when he advised he did so, not forcefully, which was shocking to not a few of us considering that growing up under him, his word was law, if not slightly less than the Ten Commandments in gravitas. Whether he learned over time to be more compromising, or the decline of his health played a role in mellowing him, we may never know. In the years he lived and saw my wife and I childless, only once or twice did he ask what effort we were making to remedy the situation, and unlike the African man who would love for his offspring to perpetuate his name, he never gave my wife any trouble, or put us under pressure. One could even surmise that he couldn't be bothered if his name was perpetuated or not, which is quite queer considering the circumstances of his birth, and what one would've thought would be his expectations.


The ones that enjoyed him most were his grandchildren. Thankfully, a horde of them lived with him in his later years, some of them off and on. He had rib-cracking nicknames for each one of them, and they loved it when he called them by those names. The play he didn't have time to do with us, he made with these ones, and they wore each other out while they were at it. Some of them had the good sense to weep at his death, while a few others because of their age thought his funeral was a carnival, and without reverence took pictures of his death face with their mobile phones, while he laid-in-state. I had written elsewhere about how it seemed his soul was seeking mine, before his burial, with the paranormal events that I witnessed at the time, including the many dreams about him after his burial, and to this day. Now I know that sometimes those we love never really leave us, and are in a dimension where they can actually follow every of our lives, even when they cannot intervene like they'd love to, to steer us away from the parts they feel may endanger us. It is why I smile when I do something I think would make him happy and proud of me, and be ashamed when I find myself in things he'd be disconcerted with, were he to be here with us.


I do really wish I had some more time with my dad, but I wonder if I'd have come to the knowledge about certain things concerning him, like I know now, had he still remained alive to this day. The way he looked restful when he was in a coma in his last days left me feeling like he thinks he must've told us all he'd needed before the time, and if there was more, it will be revealed to us in the fullness of time. In five years, much of it has been revealed, and I feel there's much more to reveal about him, messages to us about how we can make our lives as meaningful, if not more than his. On the occasion of the anniversary of his death, I can only feel that the hole that I fell in (if you remember and have been following the analogy I aforementioned) this time is deeper and wider than anyone I've fallen in since his death, and my "get-out-of-the-hole card" couldn't have been anything less than blogging about him at this time. Finally, my dad exhibited one of the best skills in penmanship that I've ever come across, the sort you'd find with cursives for writing names on certificates, and that is how he wrote normally, even in his worst of days. May the memory of MICHAEL OBIADI MADUKA OKWUNZE (AKA MICKY JAGGER) be a blessing.


'kovich



A FEW THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY DAD https://madukovich./2021/03/01/a-few-things-i-learned-from-my-dad/

(1) (Reply)

Approved Upwork Account For Sale / Quotes About Life Of The Week / Meet Our Guest Speakers - 2021 Ibadan Creative Writing Workshop

(Go Up)

Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health
religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket

Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 55
Disclaimer: Every Nairaland member is solely responsible for anything that he/she posts or uploads on Nairaland.