Baba Tunde was the chief mortuary attendant that week and he had discharged his duty routinely without any significant event. People came to his office and went, removing or depositing their dead.
He knew without asking that the people were at the mortuary to pick up their dead. From the convoy of police motor cycle and Ford cars he knew that they belonged to a high class. Baba Tunde sympathized with them, but there was not a mustard seed of envy in his heart over how well-to-do this bereaved family was.
Years ago he used to harbor jealousy over other people's possessions. Having been born into a family that scrapped their sustenance from the barest available means, he constantly succumbed to the temptation of wishing that - that car, that house and work were his.
However, since he began working close to the dead bodies in the mortuary, he had ceased from making those wishes. Strangely, living among the dead had taught him a couple of lessons that he knew he could get from nowhere else.
The chief mourner walked up and greeted Baba Tunde who responeded politely.
"Professor Adjei Mensah, please, said the chief mourner. Baba Tunde looked through some documents in a file on his desk.
"Errr, the body of Adjei Mensah, right?" asked Baba Tunde. "Professor Adjei Mensah," the chief mourner made a correction, stressing on the "professor".
Baba Tunde heard the correction but he didn't pay any attention to it. He beckoned the chief mourner and a few other close relatives to the chilling receptacles that held the dead bodies.
When Baba Tunde opened the door, one of the mourners gave out a shriek, buried her face in her palms, and retreated from the sight she beheld. It was her first time at the mortuary and the first time of seeing such a long line of died bodies lying stiff and frozen. Baba Tunde turned to look at her and started a smile but which he quickly killed.
The first time he saw frozen dead bodies when he was searching for the job, he went home completely doubtful whether he could take up that job. But soon he discovered that human beings could get used to virtually anything under the sun. Soon after he began working, he no longer saw those bodies as anything to be scared of.
Baba Tunde studied the labels along the rolls of dead bodies and came to the one bearing the name Adjei Mensah. Without the least consideration for anything, he pulled it out and allowed it to hit the bare hard floor. He did that always. Sometimes if a particular body was far to reach, he pulled several other bodies down on the floor in order to get access to the one he wanted. There was no big deal about that. But to the chief mourners and others who came for their professor, it was a big deal.
"What did you do that for?" the chief mourner asked Baba Tunde in apparent anger. "Don't you have any regard for our son? How dare you throw the professor down on the hard floor like that?"
At first Baba Tunde took that affront too personally and began to get worked up, but quickly he felt that was a joke so he broke out into a smile and then nodded.
"You're laughing!" the chief mourner shouted. "You people here have no respect for important people. right?"
That was what jolted Baba Tunde. He went home that day feeling strangely more enlightened than those people.
Who was important?
Who was the professor?
Who was the rich man?
Who was the poor man?
How different was the body of a dead professor from the body of a common man on the street?
Baba Tunde had felt like saying, "Sorry, we don't have professors in this place! People leave their titles behind them before they are brought here." But he refrained from speaking. What was the point?
Among the dead bodies that Baba Tunde worked with, no lifeless body was more important than the other.
It is at this point in life, when the breath of a person leaves him, that all people become equal. Naked they came into this world and naked shall they return. Let the living learn about this and be wise about their lives.
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