Nurse where is my father I asked, “your father is dead”. She answered. How? Please I want to see my father I said as I was getting ready to throw an adolescent tantrum to the cold nurse. “Go to the mortuary” she said coldly in a rather do not disturb me kind of voice.
The meanness, coldness and the lack of empathy in the voice of the nurse stopped me right there and blew the tantrum idea out of my mind. I walked coldly and absent mindedly to the bed that once laid my father. It’s emptiness as I stared at it only brought back the memories of what the nurse just said.
Just then my mum walked into the hospital ward with her eyes red and tired from crying. She must have been crying all night. It was then she told me my dad was dead. I stared at her blankly, I wanted to scream out my shock and cry like a river but the tears weren’t forth coming.
I walked blindly to the door of the ward and went outside to clear my head. I was only sixteen. The emptiness and want that gnawed on my inside brought back the memories of one man that is irreplaceable.
If only I can turn back the hands of time, if only I can bring someone back from the dead then I would bring back my dad. My dad was a man of peace. He was someone who was so selfless that he was well known by the villagers in our home town.
He was a man who would go out of his way to ensure that everyone around him was comfortable. All through our growing up, I saw him train many people even those who came to live with us. I saw many people come to him for help and he would never turn people away not when he has it.
He was a peaceful person who would never settle for an argument. All through my growing up, I never saw him shout any anyone and not even my mother. I never saw him and my mum have an argument or quarrel. Sometime last month, I asked my mum if she they ever had any issues when he was alive and she said no. That why would you quarrel with someone when you love them. He was an epitome of love. He was an epitome of sacrifice and selflessness but the cold hands of death took him away at a time when we needed him the most.
The entire village was shaken when he died. People who he has been of help to from all walks of life came for the burial. If I could bring back to life someone, it would be him. Because of the kind of influence he had and the kind of impact he made when he was alive. Our lives are void of his love, his discipline and his large heart.
I miss him all the time, as I write this, the nausea of what life could have been with him around surrounds me but I know he is resting in better place. He is irreplaceable.