When you lose a thing, you have a right to be sad. To mourn it as you deem fit, or not to. They're many ways we could lose a thing; it either gets broken, bad, lost or dead.
Dead. Let's talk about death. Most times when we talk about death, we talk about it with a lot of euphemism. He kicked the bucket, or he's gone or he's asleep or he's with his creator now. Do these really help? Do they in any way ease the pain? Can they possibly ameliorate the situation of the dead or their loved ones? Do they reduce the shock of hearing the news?
The news. How you break it is important. It drives the narrative, somehow. This morning, I woke up to the news on my class WhatsApp group. They said someone had died. There was a lot of emojis, mostly sad or crying. Then there was prayers, a lot of it, then positive declarations. He is alive, Tobe is.
Tobe. Tobechukwu Ngozi-Olehi. I want to write about how amazing he was, how he almost always had a smile, how he had a daunting approach to life and situations, how fun he was by just being there. Just being.
Was. I hate that I talk about him in past tense. That he was. That he had. Loved. Was loved. Lived, scratch that, lives. I want to write about how Tobe lives. In the present, yes. The people that love him, the ones that mourn him, the ones that miss him. The ones that are crying now and will cry tomorrow. The ones that grope for fortitude in memories they have of him. The love they share amongst themselves for him.
Notice that I talk about them as though I don't mourn him or I am not one of them, whatever that means. Why? On the one hand, I genuinely don't know. Honestly, I don't believe I have a right to feel as sad as I do. But does anyone have that right? Really? I see people post epistles about him. How he was so amazing. How he touched lives. I'll agree with that, he touched lives, a lot of lives, from the stage, that was his home. But do you know him? Do I? He was close to my friends, and we've worked in the same team a couple times. We were more than Hi's and Hello's. By the Nigerian definition of friends, we were friends, I guess.
On the other hand, I believe people are allowed to mourn. Whether or not you know or had a personal relationship with the dead. It is something everyone understands, the loss of a loved one. So by all means, mourn. Mourn Tobe, grieve for his death. Do whatever you have to do to be strong.
When we mourn, we remember the life that was lived. The way we wish to remember it. His face, we mould it with our words, our tears and all the surging emotions. We look at what we've created and breathe into it like the creator did.
Personally I'll miss Tobe. His cackling laughter. His poise on stage. His eloquence. I remember when his team appeared against mine in a moot competition. How he went hard on one of our witness. I hold unto that memory.
Memories. That is all we have left of him. The memories of his love and his anger and his successes and failures. The memories of us, all of us. Cheers to memories.
Contributor: Chinedu Patrick Aneke (UNN)
Edited and Published by Directionless
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Tobe will wake up by God's grace......I strongly believe❤🌹