The Impromptu Visitor – Solomon Hamza

Heralding The Ultimate Visit

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Centuries ago in Bajju tradition, it was believed that when old age was creeping up on the wise ones and the elders—greying their hairs, slouching their gaits, dimming their eyes, brittling their bones, formatting parts of their memories—death was lurking around the corner. It was so natural seeing the inevitable death sending out invitation cards to his inheritors, informing them of his coming.

My mother tells me that the elders, knowing that their end is near, would begin to show signs to their children by showing them plots of land that belong to them and the ones that don’t belong to them, settle disputes between their children and family, urging them to love one another. And when death shows up, people accept him with welcoming arms, throwing parties to bid their departing loved ones who were going on a journey of no return farewell. This is why we celebrate the death of the old ones in our communities to date.

These things have changed because nowadays, death has learnt the art of surprises and how he loves to play that game, just like the news of the country. There are no sent-out invitation cards with slanted RSVP at the bottom, no signs whatsoever. He comes with a package filled with sorrow and pain to last you a year or more. I sit and wonder if he feels  tired of coming to take a younger blood with burning desires to fulfil dreams even the late Martin Luther King Jr would be jealous of.

If he sometimes turned his face away the way slave raiders do when piling up ships with slaves stretched out like a line of clothes, each time he was about to take with him another soul. If he sometimes curses his maker for giving him such a strenuous job and getting to take all the hate, the way Lucifer takes all the blame, or if he gleefully wields his scythe, ready to harvest souls off the yielding field of mortality. If he also cries over the souls of the newborn babies, he has taken the same way the parents weep in pain. Most importantly, if he would still be sending out invitation cards like he used to or continue his new habit of appearing at the doorpost, beckoning so-and-so to come with him.

I feel this is the reason why a lot of people hate death. People relegate discussing death only at funerals to avoid bad luck. I kept thinking, Is it possible for every living soul on this planet, including the ones that have withered away like trash in a waste bin, to have a common enemy?

A foe whose name sends cold shivers down the body of every mortal? I felt that was the fate of death: to be disliked and hated for all eternity by all humans. You can’t really fault humans for hating and being afraid of death. We fear the potency of his visits; how he renders even the strong and mighty impotent and turns the all-powerful into a tossed-aside rag. No one is immune to his destructive touch. This is why I believe we collectively as a race of mortal beings resent death. 

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I usually do not cry at the news of death. I find it hard and tasking. Only questions keep ringing in my head which usually stops me from having the urge to cry. I know I won’t see that person again, except in pictures or videos. I know I won’t have moments with that person anymore, only memories. I witnessed once one woman rolling on the ground over the death of her husband. I wished I had that ability to cry also when I lose a loved one because they say when you cry over a loss, you drastically reduce the pain.

She was willing to join him and said so over and over. The people around shushed her and told her to plead for mercy. If she joins her husband, who would look after her children? They told her she has to be strong and bold and I wondered how she could ever be bold in the face of death. how could she be strong when weakened by the claws of death? Is there anyone whose life has remained the same after the visitation of death?

Growing up, I could recall how formidable visitors were. We entertained them to the core, especially when we had enough money to purchase drinks and snacks and even prepare their meals. I remember my mother dreading the fact that visitors could appear all of a sudden and dreaded most when there was not enough food or drinks to entertain them with. So I dreaded impromptu visitors as well. The same way I dreaded death.

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I can never really understand death, the motive behind humans living their lives just to die. One can plan the kind of life he wants to live—a peaceful life or a wealthy life or a flamboyant life or a reckless life – but one cannot really plan the kind of death he/she wishes to have. Death gets to pick it and a calendar to mark the end of your earthly journey. You never partake in that decision. But sometimes, when he visits, one might be lucky not to be at home during such impromptu visitations. People would say maybe it is not the person’s time yet. God has not designed for the person to die.

My cousin brother S. is a survivor of the 2012 Jos Crisis that claimed hundreds of lives. He never really talked about it and we never asked him about his experience. We were glad to see him leave Jos and return back to us in good shape. But some years later, we were discussing something similar: Boko Haram’s intense terrorism—their reckless killings, the displacement of people and what death really does to people. We just watched halfway through a public execution  and were abashed that it would come to a time when another man would cut the throat of another man like a goat and put the video out for all to watch.

We talked about the dead man and what he felt like, watching death visit with his eyes and my cousin brother brought up the issue. He was in the popular Jos Terminus market, where people swarmed in like ants around sugar when it happened. He heard a sound like the ones he hears in American movies. It was the sound of a bomb, alright. He looked up. Everybody in the market had done so too. Then, they heard the sound the second time and a voice calling out in distress for all to run away. He started running only when he heard the sounds of gunshot and a bullet flew past his ear that he could feel the heat and his ear going deaf momentarily.

He returned home and met everywhere on fire and the next place that came to his head was the Army Barracks close by. He went there and together with other survivors locked up within the safe confines and protection of the soldiers, began to call his eldest sister, whom he was staying with at that time. She, too, was safe (a neighbour had driven them and his family in his car to safety), but she was filled with worry for him. He told her he was fine and was in the barracks.

The next day, they reunited and left Jos. He concluded his story by saying what he witnessed changed his perspective about life: how you are alive this minute and the next minute, you are lying dead in your own blood. Some of the people who were standing next to him, haggling over prices of goods, were lying dead when he turned and started to run. If he flinched after staring at the bodies lying on the ground like tossed-aside dolls and had imagined them some minutes ago breathing, moving, laughing and making plans for the future. Oblivious to the fact that death was making plans for them. A different, darker plan.

 I couldn’t help but imagine how life and death really worked out their fate on man. I thought within me: how does it feel to look death in the eyes and swiftly dodge his cold hands? When people say you are a survivor, did you really fight death and win? Did life give you a second chance? Or were you just lucky not to be home when death visited? More so, I thought about the essence of second chances. Every day is your second chance to live on earth until the day it isn’t. 

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I saw life and death as two brothers playing out destiny in the lives of all mortals. Life gives a person the chance to experience this world and death gives a person the chance to experience another life. Life marks the entry, while death marks the exit. 

I could recall another incident that made me feel the impact of death. It was my elderly uncle, who was 92 at that time, who had insisted on getting married again since his wife passed away years back. He complained to his children to get him another wife or else he would die. The children rallied amongst themselves and got him a wife. The woman in question was a widow and quite old too.

My uncle agreed to the wedding since he was in need of a partner to course through the last remaining hurdles of life with, someone who would mourn him not because they are saddled with the obligation to but because a part of them has left. They got married on the 29th of June. My parents were in attendance and my mother, when she returned, gave us all the gist about the wedding. We all went to bed that day feeling amused that a 92-year-old person could get married again. In the church!

The next day, as early as possible (it was early because the call came even before we had our morning devotion), a call came through from one of the children of my uncle that he passed on. My father kept saying Jesus over and over again. I was devastated. I thought about the newly wedded woman who death had made a widow again within 24 hours. My mother voiced out my thoughts and prayed they don’t accuse the woman of killing my uncle.

While we prayed that morning after my father had called a dozen people informing them of the visitation of death, I thought about the cruelty in all of it. Death has its own way even in merriment, plunging a family who were happy and rejoicing with their father into an elegy-filled home. The sudden turn of events got me thinking: how fast is it for death to turn a mood? How sudden. How fast.

Nobody knows when; Nobody knows how. What has been dreaded for so long doesn’t fail to show at his appointed time and releases at his wake hurricanes of emotions: pain, worry, sadness, and hallucinations swirling round and round until you are consumed and taken away in it.

For The Ones Who Left Even Before We Had The Chance To Say Goodbye

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This is what makes death’s visit a more painful experience. The sudden impromptuness of hid visit. It is more painful than waking up one morning to letter by the side of bed, in it your lover writes to you of their departure from your life. There was no fore warning, no goodbyes, no ultimatum reached on how you two can return back and give love another chance. There is nothing, just an emptiness in the depth of your heart and a long, windy, cold stretch of loneliness. 

6.

The first time I ever cried for a departed soul was in Senior Secondary School. It was on a Monday we received the news. I had barbed a very stylish hairstyle — my first since I was used to barbing only low-cut so I was excited to come to school and show it off. I could recall our principal walking into our class that faithful morning to break the news to us; how everywhere became quiet until some girls started crying and the boys gathered round to console them.

The tears at first was far away from my eyes. This was a person who just spent a term with us because he was living with his Uncle at that time. I began to think about how gentle and friendly he was, how the previous week he had assisted me even though we weren’t close. And then the tears started to fall off my eyes. More memories began flooding into my head and more tears began to pour out until my classmates begged me to stop crying.

The Impromptu death triggered the pent up emotions within me to stir and whirl round and round like a sandstorm. As I cried, I thought of how he had also anticipated to come to school the previous night before his death. How he had anticipated submitting his mathematics assignment and scoring above everybody (he was very good at mathematics). How everything has come to a standstill; his dreams, passions, ambition never to be achieved. He never planned for it, death just showed up at his door and knocked and that was the end.

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And then, the death of my cousin A broke something inside of me. I was told by my mother that he gained admission into the same University that I was studying. Our mothers tried to link us up, but it did’nt actually work out until the following year when I was preparing for my Industrial Training. 

This was because each time I called him, usually at the end of a semester, he had already gone home, but that particular semester, I called him, and luckily he was still around. We met at a junction and headed to his house. We talked at length and tried to recall if we had met as little children, probably visiting our village because someone had died or a relative was getting married. We talked about life in general, our families, and our secret ambitions which go beyond our course of study (he had the intention to venture into ICT even though he was studying Agricultural Extension at that time).

Then I decided to go home, having made up my mind that i would be relocating to his place after my Industrial Training since his house was closer to school and my rent at that time was due and I was having no plans of renewing it. So we agreed, after my IT, I would be moving over and we would share the costs equally or any percentage we see best.

While he was seeing me off, I asked him when he would be going to Kaduna where he resided and he told me the next day and i teased him about being lucky to call if not, I would’nt have met him and he laughed. He equally asked me when I would be leaving and I told him, my travelling back is all set. I delayed my trip because I wanted to see him before leaving. When I travelled back home, i called him and even gave my mother the phone to talk to him and they exchanged pleasantries. 

The next day, in the evening, I was seated on the dining table, scribbling away while my parents were in the sitting room. A call came in and my father shouted. My mother asked what the problem was and my father told her. They were quiet for a while before my mother called me and told me that my cousin brother was dead.

“Which of my cousins?” I asked. She said his name and I remained frozen in space and time. The time stood still and the buzzing in my head would’nt stop. I did’nt believe them because this was someone I met two days ago. Even when I logged into Facebook and saw his picture circling amongst mutual friends and our campus group Whatsapp, I did’nt type the RIP and a long dirge eulogizing him. I logged out and could’nt get my mind to rest.

I never really believed he had died until my father returned home with a brochure of his funerals. It was his profile picture on Facebook that was used. I didn’t know he was my agemate until that day and I realized later that I didn’t know a lot about him. We had simply connected the very first day we met. And just when we were getting close to each other, getting to know each other more, death came and took him away. In my moments of grief, I wrote a short requiem for him in my heart; 

Dear A., 

You have lived life so even if you are given a chance to inhale the oxygen of this Earth again, even if it is for a second, you have actually lived. You have left with us memories which will continue to rest in our hearts forever. 

8. I see the ritual of dying as the passage for every mortal. Death is no vacation; It’s the final destination, just like arriving home after travelling all over the world. It is a lonely journey. People die; people leave behind loved ones not because death has won, but because people leave because it is time to live.  I used to ask myself, in life ‘s race, is death the winner and humans the losers? In the end, no matter how well or how badly we have lived, the end is the same for us. There are no winners; there are no losers, just an exasperated acceptance of the inevitability of life, which is in death. One can never prepare well for death; one can only live a well-fulfilled life in anticipation of death. The best of life is not spent being afraid of death because death is a debt we all must pay.