A couple of widows told me their story. And we will be looking into them for the next few weeks.
Read one of them…
‘’My husband’s death was so sudden that a part of me still unconsciously expects him to walk through the door and make me realise that everything has been a bad dream. On that fateful day, he had already called that he was on his way home, from work. I began to prepare his dinner.
Shortly after, he called me that he was near the junction that leads to our street but stopping to buy bread for breakfast.
So, when a knock came on the door over an hour later, I wanted to ask when it began to take that long to get home from the junction only to realise that the knock on the door was not that of my husband but a neighbour…who kept asking me to ‘’sit down first.’’
I knew immediately that all was not well and the first question I asked was ‘’is my husband OK”. And he told me that he was involved in an accident.
How? My husband is not a careless driver!
The story had it that two cars were trying to avoid a ditch on the busy road, which he was crossing to get to his car. And one of them hit him.
Then, our neighbour asked me to get into his car because they were taking my husband to the hospital.
While at the accident scene, I was locked in the car. All I could see was the multitude of people that gathered and then I sighted the body they were carrying into a vehicle.
It was my husband!
He looked terribly injured because he was not moving his body.
They drove him to the Teaching hospital. I was still refused to get out of the car.
The next thing I knew, a doctor came out to touch a few places in his body and they were redirected to another section of the hospital.
That’s when it dawned on me that my husband had died and what I just witnessed was him being taken to the morgue.
At this point, I started screaming. Everything had seemed like a dream earlier.
So, that call he made to me a few hours earlier was his final call to me?
Although, we didn’t have children, we were married for five years and in those years, we never exchanged words for one day!
What happens is that I express my anger by sulking and withdrawing and he is most restless when the atmosphere around the house is tense, so he never lets our strained moments see the light of the day.
I would always jump on his body when I sensed I had offended him.
It is only when his eyes are not smiling that you will know he is upset. Otherwise, he is very easy-going.
Maybe God knows how short-lived our marriage would be and He gave me a very pleasant marital experience, with the best human being I know.
It’s just that his people put a little bit of bitter taste in my mouth, following his sudden death.
For example, his father did not call me until after about two weeks, claiming that he was in shock.
Yet, the first time he called me after his son’s death, he also informed me that they would be coming to pack all his properties and that I was part of those properties they were coming for.
I got my family involved. So, they were waiting on the day they came and eventually, it was only his car that they took away.
They claimed they needed to sell it to fund his funeral.
His employers had so much paperwork laid out for us to complete before his entitlements could be released.
The sale of his car and some money in our account funded his funeral.
His younger brother called me, recently. After enquiring about my welfare, he told me that he had erected a tombstone on my husband’s grave and beautified it and since he did that, he has found closure.
My father-in-law was even making moves for my husband’s younger brother to ‘inherit’ me, ‘maritally.’ The old man said he did not want to lose me in their family because I had always taken care of him.
Eventually, the organisation that my husband worked for released his entitlements and I made sure a good percentage went to his family.’’
From Oby…
I commend her magnanimity towards his people! If you love someone, their death should not stop you from helping those they care about, if you have the means. It’s what they would have wanted.
It is not every door that death is supposed to close.
Credit: Chukwuneta Oby