Tèmítọ́pẹ́ Ọ̀jẹ́délé-Adéjùmọ̀

Today, my dad has left us for eighteen years.

The day he died, he walked me to school, holding my right hand, with him standing on the right and I on the left; there was no day my dad had ever forgotten to be between me and the tarred road that led to Supreme International School at Gild Estate. I started school at age three and at six years, I was in my first term in Primary Two, and dad would ask me about everything that happened in school the previous day, and I would relay everything, missing out nothing; I was an excellent reporter and dad paid my wages in full by buying me anything I wanted, and even much more.

On the last day he walked me down to school, he did the final arrangements of my school bag and lunch box, smoothed my Police Cap hairstyle as he always did, and asked me to go to my class, after he and the Gateman, he often tipped, had their warm exchange of “Good mornings”. Usually, I was always quick to go to class after dad had urged me on but on that day, I came back to the gate, and watched him walk down in a hurry, crossing to the other side of the road to get a bus going to Iyana Ipaja, where he had told me he would thereafter take a bus going to Yaba.

I had a huge frown on my face watching him leave, and as much as Mr. Ajadi, the Gateman, urged me to go to my class, I just stood there, created a silhouette of my dad and made him come back to the gate, leave quickly and cross to the other side of the road to board the bus, and I would bring him back and do it over again, with each attempt making me angrier, till Mr. Ajadi decided to take me to my class himself. When later that night I heard that my dad was dead, I didn’t cry, I was just mad; and it made my mother cry more.

“Mum, are you not going to work?” Silence.

“Mum? ” Silence still.

By now I should have been used to my mum not ever going to work on the anniversaries of my dad’s demise. But it has been difficult for me to reckon with someone mourning another for eighteen years! Sometimes she comes out of her room later in the day, with swollen eyes, and at other times, she is just as bright as ever.

“Adetoun, don’t forget to ‘hold a day’ for your father tomorrow.” She would tell me on every eve of dad’s remembrance, and thereafter tell me the number of years. It’s not like I forget, but I try to stay aloof, to see if it would help mum, but I’ve been wrong. I don’t even know how she gets to stay away from her administrative work in a private firm every 16th of March. She has been working there for twelve years and they must have known it’s a special holiday for her.

My parent shared the kind of love and affection I have only seen in movies. Even at a tender age, their love and respect for each other was positively choking. Even though the two, unfortunately, did not get absolute supports from their parents, they lived their lives, with me in it, in the most perfect ways.

My dad was a phenomenon. He was the one that birthed my intuitive spirit the day he left me. My intuition was trying to communicate to me that I would never see my loving father again, but it was in its embryonic stage, and as a child I didn’t understand. The only emotion I could feel was anger at my own confusion, anger at not being able to stop dad from going to his death.

But I did cry for my dad eventually, ten years later; when Beejay left me…