My mother was released from the hospital in September 1982, I remember because it was a day before my birthday and my father had permitted me to go with my aunt to take her home. She never walked again, up to this past weekend when we put her in a casket.
It was both sad and funny at the funeral, because as far as my maternal family is concerned my father is a grand wizard. He cursed their princess with his dark powers.
My aunt’s dirge at the funeral was, “Kwame Oware Wassani bayifuo eeei, enam no na ɛda hɔ no o bɛfa kɔwe.
Iiiihihihihihihi (blows her nose)“ (Translates: Kwame Oware wizard of Wassa tribe, there is meat in the coffin come eat.
) Kwame Oware is my father’s name. When my paternal aunts who accompanied me to the funeral had had enough, they started their own insinuations by indirectly calling my late mother an adulterer while pretending to cry: “Maame Oye ɔbaapa!
Ɔbaa a naware mpa so fitaaa, nante yie! Iiiiihihihihihihi.
(Blow their nose)” (Translation: Maame Oye virtuous woman, whose marital bed was unsullied, walk well.
)
We all knew unsullied did not begin to describe what was my mother’s marital bed with my father. It was sullied, literally and figuratively.
Uncle used to spend the night in my father’s absence sometimes. In the end I had to send my paternal aunts away from the funeral grounds.
It was about to get physical.
After the funeral I visited my aged father, he’s almost 80, still healthy, walks, drives and can see without eye glasses.
He is living well with his wife of about 30 years. I wanted to ask him one more time if he’d indeed done anything to my mother spiritually as her family claims.
We’d had that conversation before, my father and I. And he’s told me he never did anything apart from say the words he said the day she left.
But when you hear people say something with such conviction, it’s hard not to have doubt.
So I asked him again.
He looked me in the eye and said, “I would take my words back if I could. After that incident with what I said and what happened to your mother, I have guarded my words.
What I said worked because it came from a pure, pained heart. ”
It broke my heart to see the regret on his face.
I regretted ripping an old wound open.
But I believe my father, I grew up seeing gentle, patient kind, just, loving father. A person possessing of an evil heart cannot bear those fruits.
I have no conclusion for this story, except to say, take from it what you would. My mother blamed my father for her predicament until her dying day, not once did she ever admit to me that she’d done any wrong.
We do indeed sometimes get God’s judgement while we are still on earth.
