MY MOTHER, MY WORLD.....

I wish to use this wonderful opportunity to thank you mom for bringing I (juu boy), my elder sister ifeoma (ify lyn) and my younger sister Joy(nne mum) like used to call us when you were still alive. It’s unfortunate you no more alive to watch your nne mum and ify babe turn into mothers with lovely kids and your favourite juu boy struggle to become a man.

You were a lovely and lively woman. I could remember how you carried on in taking care of I and my siblings after dad died. You would work and do other small business just to provide for us. I could still recall so many business you did then, i enjoyed going with you to Uhum monastery to go get eggs on weekends some eggs which I kept hoping they will hatch into chicks. It was so lovely and fun being with you.

Your husband died during Christmas period on his way back to the village to take some things for Christmas home and arrange things before he will come back and we all travel for Christmas. But he never returned. The next thing I noticed was you crying with lots of people in our house, I hated to see you cry. I came and asked you where dad was some days later you told me dad went to see God in heaven and he was going to come back someday.  

I was 5yrs then and too naive to understand death then. Even when I saw your head has been shaved I wasn’t happy about it, because I felt you weren’t looking that cute like you used to.  I asked why you had to cut your hair you told me it wasn’t looking fine again and that you wanted new hairs to grow out, with time I noticed you wore white cloth regularly but I was just too naive to sense you were mourning your husband.

As I grew I started to understand dad was gone and gone forever, but I didn’t feel it much because you provided almost everything we needed. You would take us to school and made sure we came back, I would come to your office sometimes after school because you worked at UNEC and I school at university of Nigeria primary school so I stay with you in the office till you close from work and we go home, while my sisters go home with our family friend that normally brought us home after school.

I made sure I stayed with you all the time because I was just so fund of you. But you later felt so sick that you couldn’t go to work for months, you couldn’t take us to school anymore. It was so serious that my granny moved in with us to take care of you. You stayed for months in the hospital, still it didn’t make you feel any better. Your illness became worst by day that we always did fasting and prays from 6am to 12non every Saturday. I prayed to God to heal you because if you die am going to die with you. You will at times get better and we will all be happy, few days you will get sick again. I was so so worried because I missed everything we did together, I missed how we all ate together most times from one bowel with love.

I saw the struggle in you to stay alive, the day you died I felt it in the morning so  I refused to go to school, you couldn’t talk that morning you only waved at me that I should go to school. I wasn’t myself at school that day, I wasn’t just concentrating at school all I wanted was for school to dismiss so I could come home and see you. I was in primary 4 then if I could recall. Finally the school dismissal bell rang; I came home with my siblings that day on a public transport. Getting to the gate of the compound, our neighbor was already at the gate to take us to her house. She told us that water poured everywhere in the house and that till after its cleaned up before we can enter the house, I doubted it at first but because of the trust we had where she was we believed her and went to her house.

While at her house people were just coming to peep at us, like we were celebrities on a VIP. Later in the evening she took us to our house and we were told mom was dead. I felt the world turn upside down, I couldn’t cry. Throughout the night I was just reflecting back to the memories we shared with you, it was hard for me to accept you were gone just like that. Without any word to your only son whom you were so so fund of.

Your absence took many things away from me, the way I socialize as a kid then and so many more I wouldn’t want to mention. The world thinks you’re gone but you still live on in my life and have made a space in my hearth where no one can ever replace. The world will someday celebrate you with me for bringing me to the world. You were, you are and will always be the best mom in the world.

Your Son

Chukwuemeka Ugwu (Juu Boy).