Clutching my bouquet of roses with trembling fingers, I stood at the edge of Ozoemena’s grave, hemmed in by a sea of mourners. Familiar faces of coursemates blurred with strangers, all united in grief for a man whose friendship I had carelessly overlooked. The weight of the flowers in my hands felt like a mockery of the connection I had failed to nurture in life, now painfully clear in death’s unforgiving light.
Ozoemena. A guy I disliked because of hair. He had too much hair. Boy would cut his hair and have it growing the next minute; on his head, face, hands and legs.
I saw it as an insult to my non-growing hair, how could a guy be so graced? Something a woman should have and right there my dislike for him found a base so I nicknamed him in Igbo Ozo ntutu — chief of hair, removing the last part of his name.
But here I am now with flowers, one I didn’t give when he was alive but one I could afford to give at his death. I thought about the many times he had been nice, the many times he had gone out of his way to help people and the many times he had smiled.
“You better be nice to me,” he would always say to me, “now that you can still see me.”
He wanted to leave for Canada after our degree exams so he would run his master’s program and whenever he said that to me, I would frown and reply, “They won’t give you a visa!”
I also wish I never told him in Year 1 that he was a lab experiment, “I bet you were created in a Petri dish!” I said out of anger when he pulled my cap in public revealing my short scattered hair. It was supposed to be a playful stunt but it got me annoyed.
I should not have said those words to him. I should have been a little kind towards him.
I should not have left him behind, sleeping that night we all went to read in school. I should have woken him up as I left at dawn but I did not and he told me it was the students who came later by 9 am for their lecture that woke him up. He was so embarrassed.
I had simply replied, “What kind of sleep is that?” Without any form of pity.
Ozoemena was a good man, a great class representative to us, and he ensured that we were happy. He saved us countless times from the hands of our lecturers and would sometimes take the blame.
We became quite close in our final year, I don’t know but we seemed to sit together more often, were in the same group for assignments and ultimately had the same project supervisor.
There he started his joke, “Mary, the mother of Jesus, pray for me so I won’t fail my degree exams.”
“This Mary lives in Nigeria and she’s Igbo and not Jewish,” I would reply.
“It’s the same thing, just pray!” He would tell me.
On the last day of the exams, he was not present in my hall and I assumed he was in the second hall. Others in the second half assumed he was in our hall until we finished the paper and discovered he did not come to school at all.
The HOD called us together and after giving a one-week ultimatum to submit four copies of our finished project, he told us about Ozoemena and that he was dying at the hospital.
Dying? What?
I could have sworn he was okay, I mean, he comes to class every day, makes me laugh and buys me food on several occasions, how could he be battling with his liver all this while?
His last days were spent in the hospital. Dying yet laughing and trying to make a joke out of everything.
“How much does this wheelchair cost? I’d take it home and sell it, they gave it to me but we have to pay for it, you know,” He told one day.
I blamed the numerous drugs they were giving him, it seemed to weaken him and make him say all manner of things like a little child. I wanted to tell him to rest and stop talking but he preferred I listened to him and so he went on and on.
“Promise me, you won’t die,” I asked him on his last night in the hospital.
He smirked and closed his eyes.
I trusted that smile and I trusted even the way he closed his eyes. That was a sign. A yes that he would survive. I had left reasoning behind and became a seeker of signs.
“What will you do for me if I do not die?” He asked.
“I’ll join you to sell this wheelchair to the highest bidder.”
He laughed now, a weak laugh.
We stood up to sing yet another hymn in church and that was when I noticed I had been crying. It didn’t feel like it though, it felt like I wasn’t there and I was caught in between the two emotions, weeping and being dry-eyed.
Ozoemena died in the early hours of the next day.
I was at the business centre binding my project work when I received the text from the assistant class rep – “He has gone to be with the Lord.”
Rage and hate suddenly filled my spirit for everyone: for the girl at the business centre for not having my complete change, making me stand to wait for her to go and look for it; for the bike man who drove me to the teaching hospital and for driving so slowly, for even the nurse I met on duty with her pink lipstick. I also hated the colour pink at that moment.
I hated the fact that I was wailing loudly when I saw his parents and that I didn’t have the composure to cry calmly.
The tiny church was packed full, almost spilling into the main road outside. The priest went on and on about life, death and life after death and for once, my mind couldn’t settle on his message.
At the graveside, we all dropped our flowers and I thought it was rather too much and a waste as well. He would never get to see it and how we all came out en masse to attend his burial.
What we didn’t do when he celebrated his birthday in year 2. Only a handful of our coursemates honoured his invitation, I was one of those who did not.
‘𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐞.’
An engraving just at the entrance of the graveyard reads. It made me blink back the tears I left unshed.
READ ALSO: Scars That Break Us
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