Nnabuife,
First, let me thank you again for looking after me and keeping me company through malaria two years ago. I wish more than anything, that I could have done the same for you two months ago. But life- she always has these plans that just don’t sit right.
Life failed us in so many other ways:
Like your WhatsApp account popping up the day I went offline- a day to your last on this earth. An account I have a feeling I will send a cheery ‘hey there!’ to, in an off-guard moment.
Like you having to do A' levels, having to miss my last year in UI that we could have had together. The visits. The tight knitting together of our bond.
I had thought we would compensate by doing a joint something for our terribly overshadowed birthday this year, the threshold of new lives ahead for us both.
And life failed us, yet again.
We should have talked longer that Sunday, even if it was only you nagging about boarding school food losing taste to plenty-ness, and me doing my 'experienced sage' impression- laughing at you, telling you to get used to it, that there was worse sitting and awaiting your arrival to this university we never guessed you would not be attending.
I would rather talk endlessly about bland food with you, than swallow this difficult capsule of gloom that life is forcing down my throat- that it has let you go someplace else.
Someplace where your cute-as-hell smile is out of reach.
Someplace where we can’t tell you that you’re getting finer and finer by the week.
Someplace where we can’t share laughs and tease your mum about the supposed quirks of children born on the last day of the year.
Someplace where you can’t talk around-the-clock, birth and breed arguments just because, and have me defend them as December 31 excesses.
Someplace where we won’t be able to watch your golden life ahead unfold itself while rooting proudly for you, cheering from the stands.
In case you hadn’t guessed yet, I cried- inside and out- writing this.
I know that I should probably stop saying that life has failed us. And I know that if anything or anyone has failed here, it is death. If I could, I would punch it a million times over for this gaping hole in my heart- in all our hearts, although something tells me you’ve already done that with your gorgeous smile and your beautiful heart.
This is not the kind of goodbye I'd have wanted- not that I’d have ever wanted any at all.
They say that God knows best.
I've said that life has failed us.
I don’t know what you’re saying, but looking back, I'm glad that we at least did confirmation together, and since life has failed us again,
May the spirit we received that day,
guide your body home to its great end. Its rest.
May it live in your soul, a perpetually burning flame.
Yet another saint has marched into glory-
this, is my consolation.
As well as these- my attempt to immortalise you in my words, and your last status, ‘we gonna be alright’.
We will.
All of us.
Nodu na Ndokwa.
GAMALIEL NNABUIFE ENECHAZIAM
(Son. Brother. Friend. Birthday Mate. Pure Heart. Beautiful Soul. Much More.)
31.12.1999 - 1.7.2016