One Year After

The death of my mommy Glor- it reminded me that every second we have with each other is precious and we should spend it loving and caring for each other. At the time I wanted to scream to the heavens my frustration and anger. The heavens, I knew, would not listen. So, I just cried and screamed to myself.

The universe is pitiless—not cruel for it neither knows nor cares for anyone—but without concern for our hopes and dreams. But sometimes we can snatch some joy from this world and find love and goodness. At this time of the year, I remind myself of these facts and try to live my life accordingly.

I rarely live up to the ideal. Trivia always intrude on my life and turn me from concerns about those I love, and even those I barely know, but that knowledge is always there. Like “Time’s winged chariot”, or the inexorable grinding of a mill, our lives disappear, day-by-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month. Sometimes the time goes so quickly you hardly notice until your aching joints and gray hairs bring it all to consciousness. You wonder how it happened, how you turned from the youth in your mind to the middle-aged person you’ve become. I’ve chosen this time of year to remind myself and renew my desires to live for each day. So I want to commemorate mommy Glor, as I try to do every day in things large and small. And I want to mourn her loss and any loved one I ever has loved or ever will and eventually when I will ultimately be gone and we will be nothing but dust. But for now, for me, there is something more. And mommy Glor can only live on in my memories. 

The surreal feeling of the day she died has not yet fully receded. Everything since has felt just a little like a dream.

It was last year just after midnight of today when the doctor’s said we are sorry, the battle is over. She’s gone!!!. It was a nightmare where I still felt like I could wake up from or scream Jesus and it all will be over with, but No it was not, that was going to be my reality for the rest of my life. The day my mommy Glor died. I stopped everything in my life and waited, everything else now seemed pointless and empty, and wondered, screamed, talked, thought about her and what she meant to me and tried not to think about what I thought had just happened.

Oh yes she was died. 

Just like that, she was gone. I did not know; had a queer presentiment of impending doom (aside from the one I always carry inside). Nothing said this was the day when everything would change, when the light would die for one we loved. After, there was nothing even to do, but to sit together and reflect, and eventually prepare to assist dad on what to do next and how to go about it. When I reflect now on her life, a life that I shared with her, all her hopes and dreams for herself and especially for us her children, and her brothers and sisters, I hope that she was happy and fulfilled, when she was taking her last breathes. I know she must have had a million thoughts on her mind, wondering how: Mira, Ngo, Eddy, Elvis, Tseh, Robert, Eric, Isaac, Justice, Anyim, Mabel, Ngu, Noella, Ashley, Gilly, Bebe Phio, Mokom, Fanda, Batcha, Atchu, Akwen, especially her sister and roommate for 10yrs Ma Doro, her brother Ni Atchu, Ni Jerry, Ni Joe, Mami Grace, Auntie Susan her best boh, Bella, Auntie Carol, bebe Mah, Princely, Sabina, Govanni, Cidonne, Ma Bla, Shatu, Diana, Marvis, Stanley, Kami and so many other that she shared her life with on a daily, as a matter of fact on an hourly basis.

Then I comforted myself with the thought that, there was no way she could handle all these responsibilities. She must have preferred to go somewhere more comfortable, somewhere where she can intercede for all her loved one. Because there was no way she could have kept on with all her duties especially with the way that cancer had dealt with her and the constant pain she was in. Then again I remember how she had prayed and wished for God to take her away rather than have her stay on earth with all the pain, and not being able to eat or do anything for herself. 

I think she accomplished a lot of what she wanted especially in teaching her loved ones the essence of life. She is a huge part of the woman that I have grown to be today, reasonably intelligent, autonomous, self-sufficient, compassionate, conscientious adults. She didn’t have money or fame or wealth, and, while she often struggled to make ends meet, she would not have traded her life for that of anyone else but her cancer cut her dream and shredded them into pieces. 

Oddly, most of what makes our lives—and possibly makes them worth living—resides in contingency, the things that don’t happen according to plan, the things that accumulate on our souls without our notice. One day we wake and think about who or what we have become. And she had become a mother, Godmother, a grandmother, best friend, the glue that held together a fractious family, and most importantly a caring member of the society. 

I do not feel regret, I am always comforted by the fact that, I was by her side each step of her battle with cancer until the end. Her last words to me were “I love you Bingis” as she fondly called me which means child. She was a great person, a rare gem; lively, friendly, funny, adventurous, caring, giving, loyal, honest and so much more. That’s why I try to remember, to feel the loss as keenly as before, and to honor her memory by living the kind of life she would have wanted me to live.

Long before the stars burn out from the sky, long before the sun expands and ends all life on earth, long before the earth freezes over, and long, long before the universe goes cold and dark and dead, I will be gone and no one will remember or care about you or me or anything else. But for now and for as long as my synapses can still fire together, Mom, I will love and remember you until we meet again.

Love always, Bingis (Mira)