When it all ends

Between now and the middle of August, I have four funerals to attend – one in Accra and three in Kumasi.

In the first week of July, I attended another funeral in Kumasi. That brings the number to a total of five funerals in six weeks, all of people whose sons or daughters are my friends.

In the first week of September, a family funeral beckons.

Last Saturday, I received news on my secondary school year group Whatsapp platform that one of our mates, Joseph Arthur-Baafi, a fine athlete and true gentleman, popularly known as Philadelphia back in school, had passed on. 

Per our estimates, we have so far lost about 10 or 12 of our mates since we entered Form One in 1980.

All these past/imminent funerals and my classmate’s passing came together to get me reflecting deeply on the touchy subject of death, our frail mortality and the frivolity and apparent pointlessness of it all, as we huff and puff and scurry around to acquire whatever it is we crave for – money, fame, power, status or material things.

As the Swedish writer, the late Henning Mankell, aptly puts it, “Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.”

Guest columnist

My guest columnist this week is my friend Dr Ama Opoku Agyemang, a Lecturer in Pharmacy at the University of Ghana, Legon.

She shares her evolving thoughts and emotions on the subject of coping with death over the years as she grew up in a way I find rather remarkable, because it captures my sentiments in many ways.

Conversation

I remember too clearly a conversation about death I had with my mum. Our neighbour had died, and we went to the one-week celebration. There was in my mind a lot of fuss about someone who was dead, gone and never to come back.

I told my mum we should rather concentrate on the living and move on with life.

My mum’s response was that it wasn’t as simple or easy as I made it sound. I insisted I wasn’t going to cry when any of them (she or my dad) passed on. I would be sad, devastated but I wasn’t going make too much fuss, I would give them a befitting burial and just move on.

There was a lot of naiveté, unfounded bravado and inexperience talking from someone who had just turned 13.

Test

This was tested less than a year later. My General Science teacher died from sickle cell anaemia and I was heartbroken.

That was the first time I had lost someone that close to me. It slowed me, I refused to eat, I dreaded going to school for fear he was no longer going to be there.

My mum kindly reminded me of what she meant by the varied reactions of people when they lost a loved one never being that simple and easily explained. That experience changed me.

In the years that followed, my high school sweetheart lost his dad and I had to break the news to him (the funeral was the first I ever attended).

A good friend lost her dad and although I heard earlier I couldn’t break the news to her… I only managed to engage her in deep conversations about death few hours before she was picked up from school.

My teacher (and friend) from high school lost her husband in a ghastly motor traffic accident. Recently, two friends have lost their dads. Each time I lost a part of me.

Life seems suddenly slow, not worth the stress…but what hit me the most was when my grandfather fell sick (the hospital said malaria) and in less than a week he died because his heart failed him.

I was away from home and could only communicate with the family via phone. There were days I would call only to listen to my grandma just cry and I pretend to comfort her while I shed silent tears.

My faith was tested, I questioned God, I was hurt and angry at Him for more than one year.

Comfort

But then comfort comes after a while… You learn that while the people will never come back, there are the beautiful memories to treasure and legacies they left that can be continued…

I still have not made any sense of death, those I hear on the news hit me as hard as the ones close to me.

I have no expectations of the reactions I see when people lose their loved ones. I will never understand it and I don’t want to.

These days I cry till I have no more tears when I hear of any death. I grieve for as long as I can and pray and hope it gets easier to deal with as time passes on.

And it does. Someone once told me: It is never goodbye, it is so long. So, so long it is… Till we meet again.

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,

E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com