Skip to main content

READ CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S TRIBUTE TO HER FATHER: You Will Love It.

And just like that my life has changed forever. June 7, there was Daddy on our weekly family zoom call, talking and laughing. June 8, he felt unwell. Still, when we spoke he was more concerned about my concussion (I’d fallen while playing with my daughter).
June 9, we spoke briefly, my brother Okey with him. “Ka chi fo,” he said. His last words to me. June 10, he was gone.
Because I loved my father so much, so fiercely, so tenderly, I always at the back of my mind feared this day. But he was in good health. I thought we had time. I thought it wasn’t yet time. I have come undone. I have screamed, shouted, rolled on the floor, pounded things. I have shut down parts of myself.
“The children and I adore him,” my mother wrote in a tribute when he was made professor emeritus. We are broken. We are bereft, holding on to one another, planning a burial in these COVID-scarred times. I am stuck in the US, waiting. The Nigerian airports are closed. Everything is confusing, uncertain, bewildering.
Sleep is the only respite. On waking, the enormity, the finality, strikes – I will never see my father again. Never again. I crash and go under. The urge to run and run, to hide from this. The shallow surface of my mind feels safest because to go deeper is to face unbearable pain. All the tomorrows without him, his wisdom, his grace.
We talked almost daily. I sent him my travel itineraries. He would text me just before I got on a stage: Ome ife ukwu! Nothing else mattered to me as much as the pride in his eyes.
I saw him last on March 5th in Abba. I had planned to be back in May. We planned to record his stories of my great grandmother.
Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn that your side muscles will ache painfully from days of crying. You learn how glib condolences can feel.
My father was Nigeria’s first professor of Statistics. He studied Mathematics at Ibadan and got his PhD in Statistics from Berkeley, returning to Nigeria shortly before the Biafran War. A titled Igbo man – Odelu Ora Abba – deeply committed to our hometown. A Roman Catholic with a humane and luminous faith. A gentle man and a gentleman.For those who knew him, these words recur: honest, calm, kind, strong, quiet, integrity.
I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe that I am writing about my father in the past tense. My heart is broken. “
C.A
Content Credit: @JoiJohnOfficial
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Tell us what you think

Popular posts from this blog

THE HISTORY OF ENUGU-EZIKE, SINGLE LARGEST AFRICAN COMMUNITY

Enugu-Ezike reputed as the largest single community in black Africa is located in Igbo Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State of Nigeria. It has a population of about 259,431 with 36 villages in addition to some other newly created political autonomous communities. Enugu-Ezike has common boundaries with Benue and Kogi States of Nigeria. On the North is Ette, a non-Igbo speaking community in Igbo Eze North Local Government Area. On the East is Ofante and Idoma while the North West flank are Amaka and Akpanya communities of Benue State. To the South West is Ibagwa, Alor Agu, Unadu and Itchi. To the South East of Enugu-Ezike are Obollo Afor, Iheaka and Ovoko. Enugu Ezike is renowned for her palm wine, practice of traditional medicine and African Traditional Religion (ATR). As to the origin of Enugu-Ezike, various writers and researchers have come up with varied opinions about that. However, the one that appealed to me most has it that Enugu-Ezike originated from Benin Kingd...
Post a Comment
Read more

10 BEST DISPOSABLE GLOVES FOR CORONAVIRUS

Note:  When buying anything online, please exercise good judgment especially in case of buying anything for protection against coronavirus also known as COVID-19. Please refer to the  CDC website  for accurate information. As the reaches of Coronavirus continue to spread across the globe, so has the need for care in how one engages with the outside world. Health personnel most especially have started to employ more as they come in contact with different kinds of people every day. If you are not a doctor however but you work in a line where you come in contact with different people and surfaces, you also have to exercise extreme caution in order to protect yourself from contracting the highly contagious virus. To guarantee your safety from Covid-19 then, we bring you the top ten of one of the most essential PPEs you will need in this season, the disposable gloves. Here they are: 1....
2 comments
Read more

Meet The Successful Arms Dealer, Francis Arthur Nzeribe Who Sold Weapons To Both Nigeria and Biafra.

A successful arms dealer, Francis Arthur Nzeribe sold weapons to both Nigeria and Biafra during the 30-month Nigerian Civil War. As a matter of fact, Nzeribe traded arms in every single place there has been a conflict in Africa. In the 1960s, Nzeribe worked for Kwame Nkrumah as a speechwriter but after the coup that sent Nkrumah and his aides to Conakry, Nzeribe sneaked back to Ghana to work for the new government that had overthrown his principal. In April 1969, Nzeribe was involved in a bribery scandal with Ghana's Head-of-State, Joseph Arthur Ankrah which forced the latter to resign. In 1979, J.J Rawlings deported the Nigerian businessman from Ghana where he found his way to the United Kingdom to continue his arms-dealing business. In 1970, after the civil war, Nzeribe returned to Nigeria to open his first company, FANS Holdings Limited. In 1993, Nzeribe's Association for Better Nigeria approached the court on the basis of corruption and rigging to stop the announc...
Post a Comment
Read more