To my dear wife, Anita
Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of my family, I would like to appreciate you all for sharing in our sorrow during these trying times, as we mourn my wife. Permit me to appreciate my inlaws, the Tumasangs family of Alachu Mankon and more precisely, Tangiye (late) and Mangiye Mukassa for raising my wife and training her to be the rare jewel she was. I would like to appreciate all those who mentored us as a young couple.
Dear, you were an answer to the prayers and fasting my mothers did, calling on God to give a wife to their son. You were the wife any mother would wish for her son. God has been with us these past 12 years we spent together and it has been the happiest years of my existence. When I met you, I laid bare my aspirations and expectations for our lives and the values I hold. You bought into it and regularly reminded me of our targets for a period and took active steps towards realising our goals and proposing palliatives for us to catch up if we were behind our schedule. Once we had agreed on a destination, I could go to sleep trusting that you would drive us there. I never failed to testify to others that he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favours from the Lord (Pr 18:22).
God blessed us with three wonderful children, as well as many others to whom we opened our hearts. You opened your doors to all and treated our families indiscriminately. You treated my mother and my siblings the same way you treated yours. You were a rare example of self-abnegation.
You were a kind-hearted woman, sacrificing your personal comforts to serve others was just regular with you. Even when we were hard-pressed at sometimes and we could not meet up with some solicitations, you kept reminding me that we are blessed to be a blessing unto others.
You were down to earth, reaching out to everyone that came your way as a fellow human being and made friends across the different strata of life. Your humility humbled others, as few of them could reconcile your status in life to the simplicity with which you presented yourself to them.
As a peacebuilder, even if others hurt you, you rose to the moment to sue for peace and apologize even if you were right, not as a sign of weakness but as a Christian duty to live in peace with your fellow human beings.
Dear, at short notice when I call to announce that we would be having a visitor before the visitor arrived, you would prepare something delicious to entertain them.
We depended heavily on you. You were our doctor, preparing home remedies when we complained of any ailment and if we went to the hospital, you nursed us, insisting and administering the drugs prescribed to us. You were an excellent cook and your menus were always enticing. As home teacher, you reviewed the work our children did, from primary to secondary school every day. You could even study a topic even in the sciences on the internet and may ask questions to understand the topics so as to revise with our children.
You were a proponent of home-grown food despite the fact that you did not come from a farming background, and unlike most young girls with your education, you farmed the vegetables we ate, grew our poultry and you planned our plots for our personal home to include space for poultry, a fish pond and a vegetable garden. Our children don’t eat njama njama (huckleberry) when they visit and are not excited with chicken when they attend parties because they are exposed to something better at home.
You are leaving a tall order.
Dear, I cried you a river that Sunday (11/04/2021) evening and the following days till my tear glands stopped producing tears. My heart bleeds, the shock of your sudden departure is depraving, the pain and sorrow seem insurmountable, chagrin overwhelms me. The vacuum you have left can not be filled by the oceans of the world. I am only consoled by the words of Roman 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose".
I know God called you for a better purpose, better than my selfish interest to have you as wife and mother to our children, for reasons I am not fit to understand. I also know you are in a better place. Rest in the bosom of the Lord, our Creator and Redeemer, until we meet again to part no more.
