Choices made at a funeral.
My childhood days were filled with a lot of church programs. From revival services to holiday church programs, yet I managed not to make any proper friends in the church, and neither did any of my siblings.
My mum on the other was lucky enough to gain herself a friend. She was the one person I saw my mum really relate with on a very personal level since we moved to Lagos.
She was a little over fifteen years older than my mum. Her eyes filled with love and compassion. She tried to make everyone around her feel comfortable and accepted.
She had a lot, she was well to do, had grown children that took care of her, and she traveled well.
When her friendship with my mum started to blossom, it was like every other healthy relationship. A few minutes after church, but not long after, it had graduated into random visits, until finally, it became a full-blown friendship.
My mum, as tough as she could be when she wanted to be, talked about her friend whenever she got to chance, to anyone willing to listen. A big warm smile appearing on her face when she did.
We finally moved far away from her, but she and my nun still kept in touch. A call here, a text there. A visit here, a gift there.
In February 2016, when she accompanied my mum to bury her mother, I didn’t think much of it. It later dawned on me that my mum had a Jonathan-David kind of relationship with her.
Sometime in mid-2016, we were invited to attend her service of songs and funeral service. Seated by my heartbroken mum, and surrounded by so many people she had somehow managed to touch by her love and selflessness, I felt mixed emotions of joy and sadness at that moment.
The joy after the pain she suffered, she was finally going to rest with God, but sadness that a rare gem had left the earth alongside the hope of many people at that time.
The funeral service was more memorable for me than I expected. Not only because it was the first proper funeral I had attended, but because I had a mini rebirth right there, on the church pew surrounded by death and countless mourners.
As they read her achievements and how she lived her life in the service of God and others, a nerve in me spilled. I knew I had to do better, I knew it was my queue to think my life through, no matter how hard it was going to be.
I had only just graduated from university a little while before her death, and I was still trying to figure out my life, but somehow I felt a heavy burden that I had a lot to do.
That day I left the church with not just a favorite hymn, but with a renewed hope and tenacity to live the rest of my life serving God and humanity in love.
Not long after that, there were times I gave up and was done with life. There were times when my mind drifted back to the church as I heard the preacher read her achievements as they floated faintly across my ear, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit torn.
In the same vein, when I hear our favorite hymn “in Christ alone”, and I feel a sense of total renewal and refueled energy. The permission to go on and go forth to the world in love.
Yes, life is unpredictable, it can be dark, foul, and unpleasant. I’ve seen dark days, so has my sister and my mum, and so did my mom’s late friend, Mrs. A.
Losing the love of her life at such a young age had to have been one of the most painful things that could have happened to her. Yet she spread love like no other.
One thing I know is, evil can never defeat good, except good stops fighting. I intend to fight evil for the rest of my life, even if I die trying.
Love Always,
E.
