I vividly recall the last time I cried like it happened only yesterday. It all started on a casual morning in mid-2015 when I was working as a medical officer in a private hospital in Auchi, Edo state, just having completed my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year. My day had just begun when I received a call from a colleague who was a serving Corps member at the time. We all lived in the same ‘Corpers’ lodge’ and I had in fact just dropped her off at her workplace that morning on my way to work. I thought she must have forgotten something in the car when I saw her call.
When I picked up, her first words to me were ‘have you heard’?. Since I could hear some wailing in the background, I immediately knew this meant bad news. My early morning grogginess dissipated immediately and my mind did a quick spin-around to arrive at a possible cause. I replied in the negative. Her next word made me go lightheaded, so much so that I had to sit myself down. ‘Uchechi‘ (not her real name) she said.
My knees went jelly. Something bad had happened to Uchechi, and with people wailing it could only mean one thing. There were two Uchechis who served with us and we were all friends but I was very close to one. I clutched onto a last straw of hope and asked which of the Uchechis? ‘Uchechi the pharmacist‘ she replied. My dear, very good friend. It felt unreal. And just to be sure (hoping against hope) I asked what had happened to her. ‘She’s dead’. Of course she’s dead. I didn’t need the details. Although her death was completely unexpected, I had an idea what might have happened having spoken with her only a few days earlier.
I met Uche in the first few weeks of NYSC during an orientation session in our PPA (place of primary assignment). She was a pharmacist, I was a doctor, which meant we had to work closely. She caught my eye immediately because she of her astonishing beauty, the type that makes a statement once you walk into a room. I sighted an ‘intentionally conspicuous’ ring on her finger, the type worn to tell men to back off!, but I believed in miracles.
We struck a friendship immediately and it turned out she was indeed married and living with her husband and his family. She introduced me to him and we became drinking buddies. She’d often walk down to my office when there were no patients to be seen and we would chat away those lazy ‘NYSC’ afternoons. I soon became her confidant.
She spoke about her family, her past relationships, her marriage and her career. I found out she was thoroughly lonely in her marriage. Poor girl. Her husband, also a pharmacist, was very busy at the time trying to set up a medicine retail business. She told me how they met (they were classmates in uni), how he proposed, how she almost called off the engagement during their internship year, how their traditional wedding went, how she had plans to travel overseas for her Masters degree immediately after NYSC and how she couldn’t fathom how for the life of her she had ended up in a suburban city like Auchi, living with her husband’s parents and hoping at best to become a medicine store manager after NYSC. She had big dreams and the realization that she may never achieve them killed her slowly each day. In summary, she was unhappy.
She gave birth to a cute little boy just as we were rounding up our service year. She spent the next few months on maternity leave before resuming as a manager in their new pharmacy store. Their store was right next to where I had taken up a job as a medical officer after service. So I would often stop over at theirs after work to play with the baby and gist with mum and dad.
One Sunday afternoon, I got a call from her husband saying she was ill and home treatment hadn’t worked so far. He asked if she could be brought to the hospital. I said of course. When I didn’t see them by close of work, I went over to theirs to check up on them. He informed she had been sick for a while; burning hot with fever, not eating and extremely tired. Her baby was only 3 or 4 months old at the time. They ended up going to another private hospital same night. I expressed my sympathy and left.
A few days later we spoke again and he mentioned she was still admitted in the hospital and was receiving high doses of antibiotics with little improvement. I spoke with her that evening and she confirmed same to me. We hadn’t spoken in a while so we did a lot of catching up. She told me about the illness. Her biggest issue was fatigue. She had managed to start eating a little and she felt slightly better. They were initially treating her for malaria (as usual) but now she was on a cocktail of antibiotics for god-knows-what. We chatted for about an hour and I promised to visit once she’s discharged.
It was 2 or 3 days later that I received the rude shock of her death, totally unprepared. It turned out it was Lassa fever she had. As is common practice in Auchi (an endemic area in Nigeria for Lassa fever), the private hospital merchants keep their patients for too long before referring them to the National Center for Lassa Fever at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital which was less than 10 km away. She was referred quite late and succumbed within a day or two.
People react to bad news in different ways. Some scream, some faint, some go into a frenzy of destroying things, and some cry. For me, I withdraw into an inner place in my being and go quiet for days or weeks. I was quiet for the rest of the day. After work I went over for a very difficult condolence visit. Her husband put a difficult question to me, ‘on the last day will the faithful recognize themselves when they reunite in heaven?’. Of course you can’t take hope away from a grieving man so I said Yes.
It was two days after receiving the news I realized I hadn’t cried. I felt like I was bottling up a lot of sorrow inside me that needed to be let out but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to cry. Then I remembered how we used to cry during send-forth ceremonies in secondary school whenever the song ‘God be with you till we meet again’ by Jeremiah Rankin came on (https://www.boomplay.com/songs/41567383). I locked myself in my office one evening and plugged in an ear piece. I played the song and burst into tears immediately. It flowed like an endless stream. The memories came back rushing. The laughs, the sarcasm, the banter, the gossip. The community development projects we did, the Corpers’ meeting etc. I wept.
I drove home later still playing the song in my car. Overwhelmed again, I parked by the roadside and started crying again. Since this experience, I made the decision never to be taken unawares by death again. Till date, If I hear that someone is admitted in the hospital for something as simple as a fever or a headache, I hold it somewhere in my mind that there is a 0.0001% chance that the person might die. I find peace in thinking in this way. What about you, when was the last time you cried and what made you cry?