THE DARKEST HOURS OF GRIEF

Abimbola shuddered violently as she pressed the back hoodie to her face. She breathed in deeply, letting the smell of sweat and his very familiar perfume wash over her. It should make her feel better but now she only felt a deep aching pain where her soul should have been. She had lost it all. His smell still lingered around; strongest in his room. She clutched his favourite piece of clothing tightly onto her chest. Dead. Her 20 years old son.

She dropped her head onto the pillow and once again let his scent wash over her. The framed photograph on the wall called to her and she stared right at it. It had been taken 3 weeks prior; on her birthday and he had saved up some money to buy her a necklace that she now clutched tightly in her other fist. Their faces were pressed tightly to each other and he had her arms around her; the identical dimples on the left sides of their cheeks further enhancing their resemblance. Pamilerin had barely become a man before death struck. She took a deep breath again and felt the agony and sadness welling up inside her. Bimbo was drowning and there was no one to pull her out of the torrents of grief.

She was finally alone. Time had no meaning anymore. It had come to snatch her only reason for existing away and left only her behind. She was alone, yet surrounded by the memories of him. The last of the well wishers had just left; offering her too many words of comfort but none had managed to do anything to take away her pain. Everyone had repeated the same version of greeting over and over again. A long repetition of nothings that never had any history of helping people deal with losses.

‘How many parents have been in this exact position?’
‘How many others are mourning the loss of their children today?’
‘How many families are yet to find how to deal with this everlasting grief?’

The questions never stopped in her head.

Oluwapamilerin had been her entire life; and despite the circumstances surrounding his birth, despite the fact that she had been a baby herself when he was born, he had filled her life with so much joy. He had been the only constant and the only family she had had for the longest period since her 37 years of existence.

This wasn’t the first time that death had rocked her entire world. Her mum had died a day after her 9th birthday; she simply slept and never woke up and her father had followed barely 2 years later in a drunk driving accident. She vividly remembered his mangled limbs and snapped neck. She had screamed so much that her throat became coarse. That same day, her grandmother came over from Ekiti and had become her caregiver. Thanks to the house and money her parents had left behind, they were mostly okay. Mama moved her tailoring business to Lagos and made enough money to further sustain them when the money her parents left dwindled. Mama agba had been with her every step of the way even when she had fallen pregnant from her first sexual experience at 17. Mama started hawking petty provisions in addition to her tailoring work to sustain herself and the pregnancy and together, they had cut out old ankara wrappers into ‘nappy’, and made baby clothes out of her good wrappers. Mama was over the moon when Pamilerin was born safely and healthily at a trado-medical centre popularly called ‘ile alagbo’ despite all odds. She did everything possible to take care of her great grandchild and totally accepted her dysfunctional mini family.

Mama died 6 months after. Like Bimbo’s mother, she slept and never woke up.

Bimbo had been alone since then; she and her baby boy weathering all storms and getting through it all together. During the first 3 years, she had survived with the help of a neighbour who had grownup kids and hadn’t minded looking after her son and caring for him. Then their neighbour had moved away and it had been just the 2 of them. Bimbo had survived on part time jobs and petty trading- her education long forgotten. She pumped all of her energy into the wellbeing of her sweet Pamilerin and he had grown to be a very well behaved boy. She never gave marriage a consideration. She had her fair share of relationships with men who treated her son like baggage that they couldn’t accept and she had been absolutely okay with cutting every single one of them off. Bimbo had made her hair share of mistakes and learnt to live with them. But she had been happy; she and her son, they had been each other’s family and had kept each other company even through the difficult years.

Until now. Now she was all alone. Hopeless. Empty. Half dead.

Pamilerin was a good child; always had been. He had been so brilliant, smart and fearless. Never one to back down from fighting for what is right. He graduated from secondary school at the early age of 15 with the best WAEC result in his school but she had talked him into waiting until he clocked 17 to write the JAMB examination and gained admission into the University of Lagos to study Law. He lived in the school hostel but every weekend, he popped home to be with his mother. He loved her more than life itself; that she knew. And unlike other boys who shied away from showing love and affection to their mothers, Pamilerin made sure to show off his mother to everyone who cared to look or listen.

Bimbo looked around his room again, everything remained the way they should be. The clock kept ticking and the curtains kept getting swayed by the air from the open window. Time did not stop. Pamilerin’s heart did. Death was a march of time; inevitable and unavoidable but no one ever wants to bury their child.

She was always familiar with the heart wrenching pain that death brought with it but nothing prepared her for this one. The death of her parents, she could survive, the death of a few acquaintances over the years, she could mourn and move on; the death of her loving mama agba, time had stopped but it resumed again. But the death of her only joy in the world? There was no coming back from it. The pain was crushing and she had no idea what to do with it thrumming through her entire body.

She was alone again.

Pamilerin was supposed to start his internship next week. The thought of the bright future ahead of her son all came rushing in and the pain hit her like a freight train again. She crumbled onto the ground and stuffed the hoodie into her mouth; afraid that her sobs would turn into screams and the screams wouldn’t stop once she started. When she saw a picture of her son’s dead body on facebook at 12:32am on 21st October 2020, she had shaken her head repeatedly till morning whispering to herself that it couldn’t be her son. Helpless with no one to call. Waiting for day to break and for the nightmare to be over.

‘Not Oluwapamilerin’
‘God wouldn’t take her happiness from her.’
‘He wouldn’t be so callous.’

She was right. God didn’t take him away. The Nigerian Military did. They had shot her son in the head at the Lekki Toll Gate during the ENDSARS protests. They say time heals all wounds but not this one. This particular wound is fatal. She’d rather die than live without her son.