Who will console you well enough

Maybe not everyone, but after losing somebody dear, most people want their consolers to sit still in the parlour and say nothing because everything they utter will never come out right at the moment. You want them to be people you love, people whose cologne or personal scents you know. You want only your lovers, your family, or those with equal importance to you as the deceased. You want them to sit there, right beside you, holding your hand in theirs as they stroke their thumb soothingly on the back of your hand. You want your head on their shoulders so you can sulk away from existence.

But what you don't want is Sister Patricia, head of evangelism, and Brother Samson, head of the choir that your deceased had forced you to join at sixteen, to bring half the church population to your small parlour. Lately, the walls there seem to be closing in on you, and the last thing you need is the entourage from the church crowding around it because they would think it was a good gesture. ‘After all, it is the best we can do', you imagine them saying before leaving the church that hot Sunday afternoon for your house.

You don't want Sister Patricia saying, 'Peace be unto this house, as she enters because there is no peace right now. There is death. You don't want her and the other women to offer to prepare you food in your kitchen because you don't want them dropping your kitchen utensils in new places you are yet to discover in your crowded cooking space. Besides, you are mourning, not handicapped.

When they come, they all sit quietly, but it's not the kind of quiet you want. Why should twenty-five people who have never shown up at your house be here now? You eye them rudely because you know that they will forget about the deceased once they get home, while you have further apparitions and interactions in your dreams. But they don't see you because your fallen black turban's tip covers your face.

It all seems bearable until Brother Samson's dark fat lips part to reveal years of decaying dentition. 'God gives, and God takes. Brethren, let us rise and pray,' he says. You wish him the death of a loved one, maybe his wife, and even though you shouldn't, you do, and you could not care any less. You did not want to hear any religious teaching. Not now, not ever.

You don't want to hear your friends saying, 'Sorry' or whatever conscious and calculated statements they will make. You've often wondered about the word "sorry." you didn't fall or have an accident. You lost somebody, so why would they give you the condolences given to somebody who kicked a bucket and tripped. You don't want them, or anybody at all, calling you, and when you eventually pick, you don't want them starting with the rhetoric, 'Is it true?' You're not possibly pulling a joke.

'They must be mad', you say to yourself when you drop the call.

You don't want your relatives to come around because death is not another reason to party like ninety-nine. Aunty Christabel arrives first, her silver rosary inconspicuous against her pink blouse and the blue wrapper she is putting on. Her very thinly drawn eyebrows, amateur puckered pink lipstick and the plentiful talc powder rubbed over her face all remind you of old images of the deceased in the village before you were born.

“Nwannem, My baby", she says, opening her arms wide for a hug. "You're looking lean. You've not been eating." She never fails to shame you for being thin. You sniff her; she reeks of firewood and worn clothes. Again, you don't want anyone in your kitchen, but when you see the ugba and abasha for nkwobi in the black cellophane bag she dropped on the ground before hugging you, you don't refuse the offer. Nkwobi was the favourite of the deceased, even though later, the delicacy won't pass through your throat when you tried to eat it.

Uncle Peter comes in next, followed by some others with their children. They dig into the Nkwobi that should have been yours. They discuss the burial arrangements, deciding how many cows to kill. When they see you pass, they say, 'Just like that, gone,' in-between lamenting hisses. They decide on the date first and then disagree about the venue being at Umuahia, Yaba Cemetery in Lagos, or just in the backyard.

You don't want a Party. You don't want to write a pity epistle. You don't want to answer questions saying, 'How did it happen?‘ 'Cancer?', 'Mere malaria?' So you turn off your phone.

Months later, the family's matching Ankara prints, steaming bowls of Jollof rice, bottles of stout, the wake keep and church memorial have all become distant memories in other people's minds. But you still cry in bed when you look at photos you took months earlier with the deceased at a park. You cry alone because you don't want anyone saying again, 'I thought you would have gotten over this by now. You're not the first to lose your mother, you know?' It was a good thing that you didn't have a gun when they uttered those hurtful words, or you would have shot the shit out of the foolish person's head.

What you wanted was for Chikezie whom you had broken up with two days before the now deceased died, to show up at your house and struggle to take advantage of the vulnerability you were hiding behind a strong facade. You wanted him to, after holding hands, let you cry on his shoulders. You want him to say, 'It's okay, and wrap you in his arms on your black spring bed while you both watch the Simpsons. But instead, you got none of what you wanted and all of what you didn't want.

Instead, you got another sibling who survived while your mother couldn't. You got more responsibility, and nobody could console you well enough.

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