My mother of blessed memory, left this fallen world on Tuesday, 21 December, 2021 and was buried on Friday, 21 January, 2022. We had her one year memorial on Wednesday, 21 December, 2022. Believe it or not, I am still grieving and, for real, I just shed a tear or two. The tears are still rolling down my cheeks, uncontrollably and unbelievably!
With every passing day, I have to come to terms with the loss of the greatest love of my filial existence. She had the most sincere and dedicated sacrifice for my birth and upbringing, and the unreserved commitment to expend all she had, even to her last kobo, for me to survive the rigours of growing up in a harsh environment and difficult time. She weathered through all forms of domestic ill-treatment, denied herself of all comfort, and wouldn’t have blinked if she had to give her ultimate to ensure I survived.
At times she sold all she had and endured all inconveniences, including trekking for 15 kilometres either way to get me to the ECWA Mission Health Centre at Kuroko-Okene to save my life. No day passes without her thought flashing through my mind. Some days I wake up wanting to call her as I usually did every 6am, only to feel the reality of how her going away continues to hit me like tumbling boulders from the hill top.
Mama was a good woman in its entirety and an epitome of a mother any child could wish to have. She was much more than an unquantifiable priceless gold of a mother who expended her love on me that regrettably, I never was able to fully pay her back. I wished I had done much more even though you sat me down 5 years to your demise and told me, in appreciation of the little care I could give, that I had already celebrated your burial. She appreciated the little anyone could give. She pleasantly shocked me when she told me in 2011 that she knew it was because of her I shelved going back to my plum job in Hong Kong at the end of my NOUN tenure!
Mama, Iy’oboro, apẹ wiya, ọsẹlẹ ukwuba continue to rest in perfect peace with the Lord, till we meet to part no more. If I have to choose a mother in my next world, no doubt you are the gem, whose womb I must struggle to come through; no option for me!
You are missed every hour, but fondly remembered.
Please do me, my family, and God Almighty whom Mama served till her last breathe a favour to say a word of prayer of thanksgiving as a memorial to my late mother, Mama Esther Iwalewa Anabisa Jegede (nee Ajobiewe Ahonwa) who passed on at 99 years of age, a year ago .