Life....nothing else to Say About it

I will never forget the scream my mother had let out that morning. I had been watching t.v. moments earlier when the phone rang. The caller ID failed to tell who was calling so as usual I refused to answer. Mom called from the other room to answer the phone and reluctantly I answered. "Hello," I said trying to figure out who was calling; all that I was about to get was that it was a cousin of my mothers. I went over to the living room where my mom was reading and handed her the phone, telling her that it was a cousin. Within the next minute, I went up to my room thinking I had heard a text come in...there was nothing. As I turned to leave the room, just crossing the threshold of the door I hear my mother scream. A scream that I had never heard from her before. I ran downstairs to find my mom wailing, arms waving in the air and in tears. I instantly knew that someone had died. My younger siblings had come into the room as well. We all wanted to know what had happened, but despite our pleas, our mother refused to speak.

All that I could think to do was to wrap my arms around her and try to comfort her. But she kept pushing my arms away and telling me to leave her. My siblings and I just watched helplessly not knowing what to do, or if there was anything that we could do. While she cried, they sat and I stood with my arm on the back of her chair. Dad came downstairs to ask what was wrong, all I could say was "I think someone died." Dad waited, and then tried to ask mom what had happened and she continued to cry as though she could not hear us, refusing to give up the source of her sorrows. I remembered the name of the person who called, all that kept ringing in my head was the last name, and whose death could make my mom cry like this. I was hoping that it was not any of my cousins who we had spent two weeks in Nigeria last summer. But I didn't know for sure, different people kept coming to my mind and I couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose any of them. My dad had gone back upstairs at this point to give mom some room I guess.

I begged my mother to tell us what had happened, but once again she wouldn't tell. I looked at my sister, she looked at me and mouthed this name. I didn't get it at first. She repeated the mouthed the name again and along with it "mom's oldest sister." I was shocked...thinking how she could have died. We never knew she was sick. For the first time, I could feel tears in my eyes, because it would be the second time I was able to put a face to a name of someone who died. The first was a few months earlier, when an uncle of my dad's died...we had visited his house a couple times in Nigeria that summer, and he welcomed us with open arms. Even though he last saw some of my siblings (my little brother wasn't born yet) and myself maybe 13 or 14 years ago...he had greeted us with open arms. As though we were his own children. My parents always talked highly of him, and we got to see his generosity with our own eyes. They said that he died of stress...he was stretched thin monetarily, and he even called my dad to ask if he could borrow some money for his son...*sigh*

My mom's sister had traveled 8 or so hours to spend those two weeks with our family and she was around as all the time. Took me to my first open market...if she had died, I would really know what it means to lose someone in your family. Tears in my eyes, I stood next to my mom. Five minutes later, my mom began to talk. She said that a cousin of hers died of kidney failure. On one had, I felt relief that it wasn't the aunt that died, but I felt sad because a life is still a life. A brother-in-law of my mothers died of kidney failure a couple months back, and that cousin attended the funeral. In the words of my mother "little did he know that he too would follow suite and suffer the same fate."

I feel horrible, my mom told me of how she had met another Nigerian who had kidney failure here in the US...and how two years later, she saw him again and he looked much better. He had just received his much needed kidney transplant. Here in the U.S., you can get the treatment...but unless you have the money in Nigeria, that disease is basically a death sentence. And ironically enough, after my uncle had died of kidney failure, we were watching NTA and they were talking about kidney dialysis machines and how they are hard to come by. And they were talking about some hospital that had two of them. I can't even begin to fathom....life really comes at you fast. And someone that you were talking to not long ago, can be snatched away from you like that on the wings of death.

I have been saying that I will try to do something, but that moment, when I thought that I had lost someone in a manner...I have just really decided that I can't keep saying that I will do something and not. I want to help...I don't know how. Maybe I can raise money to pay for dialysis machines to put in the hospitals or something. I'm just really confused...sad, I don't know what. But I'm writing this post because I think I just want to take a break from blogging...maybe a week or two. I somehow feel that this is just the time for me to really just reevaluate my life and think more about what it is that I want to do now and what I want in the future. I've just got a lot to think about...

Take care of yourselves everyone, and stay blessed :-)