My Aunty Labs

Death is such a final phenomenon. We get all sorts of euphemisms about how we’d see our loved one again at the feet of Jesus and how it is goodnight and not goodbye and how we will see again in the ‘morning’. The finality of death is not diminished by any spin we try to give it. It is simple really. You just will not see, hold or laugh with the deceased again, at least not in human form. Simple.

I am fully aware that we are spiritual beings that have assumed human bodies as vehicles for an earthly journey and that at some point, now or later, that journey will end and we will be required to alight from these vehicles of flesh and blood. I am all too aware of this. Our mortality is certain.

I first met Mayowa Okuyiga donkey years ago as a teenager. She was this short but extremely heady girl who was full of mischief. I fell in love with her and I was convinced we were soulmates. Even at that age, I was quite expressive with the letters professing my undying love to her. I think everyone and their dog on Tobun Street knew. Interestingly though, this story isn’t about Mayowa. It is about her mum, Mrs Adelabake Faramade Okuyiga. 

Over the last week, I have tried with futility to recall the very time I met Mrs O as I started to call her. I now keep wondering why she was such a warm, gentle, kind and extremely hospitable person given that I was such a rascal at the time. It was hard to believe that she was my mother’s age mate.

I was closer to Mrs O than I was to my biological mother. You can make of that whatever you want but that was the absolute truth. Even after my close friend, her daughter, had left her nest and moved abroad, I and Mrs O would still sit and chat for hours. I couldn’t pass through the area and not give her a ring to find out if she was home for gist. It was a very peculiar friendship based on mutual respect and it was one I did not take for granted.

She had escaped death twice in the last few years. First was in a gory accident that totaled her grey Toyota Corolla. She had multiple fractures that had to be operated and I remember she was the first person I ever had to donate blood for. That accident and the interventions that followed altered her gait till she died as she now walked with a limb and used a stick for support occasionally.

The other episode was a few years later when she was diagnosed with a schwannoma (a benign nerve tumor) in her abdomen. She was ill for a while and I was glad she was able to recover well enough to get medical follow-up abroad. I remain convinced that there’s a nexus between that benign tumor and the malignancy that eventually took her away from us.

In March of 2019, she called me as she does when she notices any changes in her health and complained of an episode of dizziness. I remember she said she was cooking at home at Onike when she felt funny and I asked some questions based on her medical history of hypertension. I was almost certain it wasn’t anything serious but what followed in the coming week shook me. So we investigated and it turned out that there was already a spread to her chest. All the while, she had no respiratory symptoms. It was bewildering.

And so the journey that would culminate in her demise started. An unending cycle of laboratory tests, scans, transfusions, admissions and chemotherapy. The toll it took on her body was devastating as her old bubbly self slowly eroded away. I felt really sad to see her go through what she had to but she fought! Oh how she fought! That fight ended last week on Monday April 26 2021.

Her watch ended and even though she had given us time to prepare to it, it still hit hard. A part of me has died. The same month DMX, an icon of my adolescence bowed out. I lost one of my very best friends and another very critical part of my growing up. A part of me died on Monday. One of the very few people who really understood me left and my mind was numb all through work on Monday. I was present but still quite faraway. Our last WhatsApp messages have been read and reread.

I suck at grieving. I usually won’t cry but I’d hold a grudge against life. Anger. How dare it take away my happy place? How dare it allow Mrs O suffer so much just to take her away? How dare life think she deserved such callousness?

We are now preparing for a funeral. She has left us but we commit her to Earth in exactly a fortnight.
Dear Mrs O, all I can say is Thank You.
For being the light, leading and living by love.
For personifying love.
For being unwavering in your kindness and openness.
For listening.
For being a safe haven where I never felt judged or pressured.
For rooting for me even at my lowest.
For wise counsel.
For guidance even when you had no skin in the game.
For praying.
For the legendary moin-moin and fresh Underground bread.
For Oluwamayowa, Olufunmito and Olumide.
For Boluwatife, Abininuola and Nathan.
For your innumerable non-biological children.
For the cocktail of emotions I currently feel but cannot quite express in words.
Thank you.
I know I don’t have to ask but still, please keep watch over us.
I love you Mums and in my heart, you will live forever.
Now, rest…

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Romans 8: 35 - 37

Adelabake Faramade Okuyiga
August 23 1955 - April 26 2021