By Victor Okigbo
We had come to say goodbye. We knew that she was dying. We knew that she knew it too. And yet, there she was; with a sly smile and a twinkle in her eye; effortlessly graceful in her short grey hairdo. She was lucid and involved. A little tired, but very much alive and decidedly fun to be around. Last year, when she shrugged off cancer, I saw that same pluck and verve. As we celebrated her birthdays with her at 78, 79, and 80 she seemed indestructible; her bearing never less than regal; her spirit made of incombustible Cool. Cancer never stood a chance against her courage. Goodbyes seemed premature. But we came anyway, just in case.
Everyone came. And as the family and friends gathered, the atmosphere in the Apapa house lightened; the mood became almost celebratory. We were hanging out with our Aunt Victoria. Just like we used to… Chieme her last son warned us not to be solemn. So we chatted, reminisced and teased; recalled her quirky and distinctive ways: how she asked her eldest son, Ben, to write her eulogy so that she could proof-read it herself. She was self-assured and practical like that. How she said she wanted people to know that she stared the cancer down and survived - she wanted them to know she died of old age, cheekily poking fun at death.
Her condition worsened. There was one last visit to the hospital and then she went back home. I got the call from Okey, her younger son. Aunt Victoria Okuzu – Ezinne Iyom, Nwa Ada Ojoto, had died that afternoon. Later, I learned from her daughters Apo and Nwando in whose arms she died in peace, that her final words were: “going… going…”. They wondered, at the time, what she meant. It was the perfect exit line.
She is gone. And her exit has made our last meeting our final true farewell. Even though I had hoped to see her one last time that weekend. It was alright. The family had convened again to celebrate her life and plan her funeral. Her photograph was everywhere reinforcing the permanence of her memory. The imprint of her smile and the indescribable twinkle in her eye reminding us that something lasting always remains. The living trace of her memory in my life and in the lives of her family and friends remains.
What made her so extraordinary? Why was she so beloved? She gave brutally frank advice. She could swat grown men with a single glance. With a perfectly turned phrase, she could reduce any complex argument to semantic rubble. But when she held my face in her hands and said “I love you” my heart would melt and I would feel like a schoolboy. Her nephews, nieces and grandchildren adored her. To me, I almost couldn’t love her enough. She was that old archetype: The Favourite Aunt. She played it to the hilt.
As we drank a toast or three in her honour. I realised that in a family of so many formidable individuals – poets, mavericks, iconoclasts, ferociously intellectual scholars, arch patriarchs and matriarchs, she was the one, the only one, who blended all the features and attributes of her siblings in a wonderfully mixed and balanced personality; spiked with a potent dose of love. Maybe she was born like that, or maybe, I fancied, she accumulated the love and virtue of her formidable siblings; absorbing by spiritual osmosis, the living trace left by the departed. The lump in my throat receded. I felt a kind of comfort and a kind of pride. She is a part of us now. We will not be separated.
Larkin wrote the enigmatic line; “What will survive of us is love”. Scholars debate his intent. For my Aunt Victoria, I read the line literally. She is gone but the love survives. We cannot but embrace it. It is what I feel when I think of her; what I see looking back at me when I look at her picture now. It is what binds us to her children and grandchildren. It is her legacy, her identity, her true nature, her true self. It is eternal. Instinctively we are grateful for this and yearn to express that gratitude in gestures, in tears or smiles, in song, in poetry or in simple tributes like this one. Love is the thing we get to keep and share forever. To everything else, we have come to say goodbye.
Lagos, October 2013
