I was abandoned as soon as i was given birth to. Every single person there was gripped and shocked by the sudden death of my mom after the delivery. For as far as they care, it's the little newborn baby that took the life of her mother as such she didn't deserve to live so she cannot kill more of the family members. Nevertheless, in the midst of grief, one person amongst them remembered the dead woman gave birth to a child. It was my grandmother, the mother of the dead and the grandmother of the new born innocent baby. The grandmother took the baby home from the hospital and began an era of training a new born baby, a baby who arrived the world in a tragic circumstance. As i was growing up, i was not aware of my calamitous background. A brilliant, intelligent young girl. I was resolute in getting married to the first man that de-flowered me. In the end, the first man disappointed me. Thus i have my personal encounter with grief...
I later promised not to marry any other person and i entered into a word of loneliness and abandonment. A lot of questions disturbed my fragile mind. Questions infact more questions than answers.
Finally, answers came to nail all the questions in one moment i expected. The translucent barrier disappeared and the way was clear and through. Nature and life have their own suspense too. As a mortal human being, life can play tricks and pranks. A missing person and s dead person will ultimately meet one day, it's a matter of time. A broken pot can be discarded, but not so for a broken Heart. It needs mending and healing.
In every disappointment, there's always a blessing according to one popular adage. This story comes in Volumes and it goes like this,
VOL. 1. MY BIRTH.
The right person to tell the story of my birth would have been my mother, but she gave up the ghost after she gave birth to me. It therefore behold on my grandmother to tell me the tragic incidence of my birth.
When my mother labourer for three days, a medical consultant advised she should be operated upon as it became clear she could not safely deliver me. The proposal was seriously objected. The word operation was forbidden for pregnant women in our tradition, my people dreaded it like a pandemic.
Her determination and efforts to prove the consultant wrong produced 50-50 success. She made the last push with all the strength in her. I came out of her accompanied by her last breath. She never opened her eyes to see the bundle of joy that brought so much pain to her in the last three days and the past nine months. The doctors battled their best to revive her, but she couldn't make it, she had gone to the world beyond.
My mother feared the operation would result in death, little did she know she will still die without the operation. What is to happen must happen. The doctor had the big task of breaking the sad news to my father and grandmother who were outside the theater waiting for the good news of the safe delivery. The atmosphere immediately changed soured. The sorrow of the death surpassed the joy of life. The waiting room suddenly became a wailing room. Even non relatives and passerbys joined My father and grandmother and all those that came in expressing their profound grief. Tears flows non stop as if it's abundance could replace the monumental loss of my mother.
The grief was too much for my father to bear alone and too much to share with my grandmother. He sent for hi brothers to join him in the hospital. They came and their wailings overtook all activities in the hospital. They hospital management carefully eased them out. They all left to mourn the dead and neglected me for a while.
The tragedy of my mother's death is the first of it's kind in the family in recent time. No woman has died during child birth as far as anybody could recollect in the family. My mother broke the record and i came to the world a cause celebre. An embodiment of the family tragedy.
In the midst of confusion and wailing, my grandmother was the first to get back herself to composure. My mother's death was actually a personal loss to her. She reasoned that if i could survive my fragile childhood, i would be a source of comfort and joy to her. My father on his part after he might have endured for some years could remarry. My grandmother quickly decided to go back to the hospital and bring me home. The Doctors and nurses in the hospital were so keen to get to be relieved of the baby that brought so much disruption to their operations. My performed the formalities and settled the bills and took me home. Women are naturally blessed with the ability to get over tremendous shock easily in this kind of circumstance especially because there was a baby to take care of. After all it would still have been her responsibility to take care of the new born and the nursing mother unfortunately my mother's breast milk won't be there for for me. Her last child was ten years old. My mother was twenty five years old when she died. Grandmother was fifty one years old at the time. She's still relatively young enough to nurse a newborn baby and eventually her first grandchild. A grand daughter that meant different things to different people. In my paternal side, they saw me as the devil's incarnate, a wicked child who sent her mother to the grave on arrival. In my grandmother's side, i was received with mixed feelings, sympathy and love. Sympathy for my Dead mother and love for seeing me as her replacement in their midst.
Readers please catch me up in my next VOL. Thanks for following.