November 2023: Trans-ekulu, Enugu.

All my life I have viewed death at arm’s length, through the lens of a stranger. Even the death of other family relatives smelled differently, almost like a faraway thing. But when I think about my parents, I wonder the colour grief would assume when they exit this earth. When it finally strikes home, would death take on a smell too putrid for catharsis? Would grief succeed in stealing the rooms in my body, becoming too intimate to eject?

*

A light rain patters down the roof of our house while I thumb through an old album of pictures. I am sitting in one of the four black sofas, tucked in a rectangular ring. I don’t know if this is my mother’s favourite chair, but she never fails to plop down on it whenever she strolls into the living room. I believe when someone does something or uses a thing, unconsciously, over time, that action or thing becomes a vital part of them. Just like this sofa has become a repository of my mother’s body, imbibing her scent and warmth. The sofa sits on the left, beside a glass center table, directly opposite the TV plastered to the wall. It’s a privilege to take my mother’s seat, to rock my body against the spaces she’s been. At this point, I stop fiddling with the pages, and close my eyes. Instead of me, I imagine her on this chair, and train my ears to the gentle tap of her hands on the arms of the chair. On most evenings after a shower, my mother wears a faded blue and black patterned wrapper. Even now, I picture the wrapper flung around her body and inhale the dry muskiness that speaks of age.

Mama, a retrenched bursar, is not dead. She’s in Abuja, with my father, who works with the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development. My parents are both alive but sometimes I fear that one day, the thread holding their existence in place would snap and all that would remain are memories heaped on history’s back. My father is 5.8 feet, taller than my mother, and he wears a dark skin, while my mother is the colour of ripe pawpaw. Both have fairly large noses to accommodate their round faces; unlike Papa, Mama has a pair of beautiful bright eyes. But sadly, these features are slowly eroding with the passage of time. My mother’s hair is now glazed with specks of white, and unlike her, my father wears a cleanshaven head and beard, as if he’s determined to make a case against nature, a demand for his youth. In the pictures, my parents’ bodies have witnessed a series of metamorphoses. There’s a picture of them, taken when their eyes were full of light and ardor. A time when they wore their afros with style, thick and glossy, and grinned. Against a black and white background, Papa can be seen sporting an afro, a craggy beard and a pair of bootcut trousers. He poses in front of a tree, his arm resting on the shoulder of another man in afro. There’s a tenderness to my mother’s pose: the tilt of her head to one side, the smile on her face, the graceful arch of her back as she plants a hand on her waist, her knee-length gown devoid of pleats. In today’s world, their pose could be tagged prosaic and their clothes too simple to meet the new wave of high fashion taste.

There are other pictures of my parents taken at different places and events. Some of them make me laugh, smile and cry at intervals. I hold a picture against the light and blink back hot tears. It was probably taken in 2013, but the memories are fresh as dew. Somewhere in Kogi State, we are standing in front of a church building, posing before a camera: our parents and three brothers, my sister and I dressed in white beside the Bishop clad in a purple vestment. We have just been confirmed, newly conscripted soldiers of Christ, and everyone else is radiant with smiles except me. I don’t know how to smile before a camera and each time I force it, my face comes out squeezed. I remember that day, the sun boiling over our heads, the sweat dribbling down my face as the photographer urged me to smile a little, and my parents glaring at me.

Years later, I wish I had smiled. I wish I wasn’t a mimosa plant, always shutting myself out of the world, away from my parents each time they stepped into my space. Growing up, love was measured in small dosages and passed around. When we greeted our parents, we added sir or ma, thanked them after every meal, chanted“Daddy welcome, Mummy welcome”, following their return from work or the market. There were no hugs. It wasn’t a taboo to hug our parents or siblings, but it could be viewed as perfunctory, too elastic to be real. Our parents were the adults I was first introduced to early in life, and without the strings of cordiality properly binding us together, I saw them only as parents—people who had decided to be married, have children, protect them and provide their needs. I didn’t fully understand the reason for the chasm between my parents and me or my sudden withdrawal each time they tried to reach out, to show affection. Perhaps, it had something to do with the countless times they fought in our presence without a speck of regard for us, their children, our feelings. Or the moments Papa launched vile words at Mama from the quiver of his mouth that ran like a faulty tap, unashamedly, even while we pleaded with him to stop. Maybe I couldn’t comprehend how two individuals, living under one roof, could become depositories of distinct attributes. How they could so easily morph from the sweet-loving couple they had been moments ago into ravenous wolves determined to tear each other to smithereens.

Still, one thing stood out among us: our love for the mundane. Like telling stories or spending the whole weekend huddled in front of the screen, watching Africa Magic or Telemundo (despite my love for both gradually fading away). My parents, especially Mama, fed us with stories of people, places and moments in their past life. She told us about the Biafran war, how some people fled their homes in terror, and those who could not escape the onslaught ended up as dead bodies lining the streets of Okigwe. How a mother had flung her crying baby into the bush to escape being seen by the soldiers and returned hours later to find the spot where she had thrown the child empty. The baby was gone.

My growing up was bushwhacked by bouts of illnesses that ate into my time for school and house chores. Yet, I remember being struck by malaria and fever at the same time. It was so profound that I was confined to my bed for days, only wriggling off to the toilet to vomit. I thought I was going to die. One evening, the door squealed open, and my father walked in.“Imeriagha?” he said. “How is your body?”I could barely nod or open my mouth. His eyes were laced with fear as he asked if I had vomited again, and I nodded my response. He leaned in and touched my head and said my body was too hot. It felt awkward, his hand on my body, his outright display of warmth and affection, the way he said “ndo.” I was so used to my mother’s touch—her hand running down my body, as if trying to massage the hotness away, her measure of love—that his felt alien.

*

Over the years, the gulf between my parents and me has congealed into walls; so, I’m making a deliberate effort to break through them. I am 27 and still living with my mother. As a teacher working at a private school, it’s almost suicidal to plant my hope on monthly salary. After school, I scuttle from house to house for home lessons, because I’m trying to make ends meet. Because I’m so passionate about being successful, and because I want to be available for my parents. To help oil their path towards senescence, to support them financially just as they’ve done for me.

Despite all these, I try to carve out time to be with my family; and although it’s difficult to fully comprehend my parents when they talk, I provide a listening ear. Where needed, I humour their dry jokes, cringe at the death of an old friend, stifle the urge to lash back at my father when he insults me. I don’t blame them when they fail to recall what I told them some days ago. Neither do I remind them of the staleness of their stories. On second thought, who gets tired of old wine?

Maybe everything happening to my parents—the sudden loss of memory, the stories they tell that sound like songs on repeat—is all part of the ageing process. But I’m scared of losing them. In the pictures, I compare their lives from whence they started to where they are, and I feel so hog-tied at the hapless reality of their slipping away. I scroll through my phone’s gallery and pause at a photo of them standing beside my younger brother, dressed in a convocation gown. This picture is the most recent I have of my parents, and I can’t help but imagine how stilted they look from those wrinkled lines, how fragile the smiles on their faces appear, the exhaustion on my mother’s face. It’s mentally tiring to picture a moment when their smiles, faces and voices would become bags of memories I’d have to carry throughout my life.

*

Two months ago, Mum slipped off a flight of stairs at the back of the house and twisted an ankle. Whenever I remember this incident, how I had been absent from home when it occurred, my heart hammers against my chest. Sometimes I imagine a different scenario: what if her head had landed heavily against the block of cement and not her hands? What if she lay on the ground, still, her eyes wide with tears, blood oozing out of a gash in her skull, the world moving on without her?

The X-ray showed that she sustained a fracture, and the doctor suggested a bed rest. Still, Mama has a resilient spirit. “I’m healed in Jesus name, no need for any bed rest. That doctor thinks I’m going to return to that hospital. God forbid!”she says each time I beg her to take it easy on herself. Then, my father calls to complain about his sight failing him, perhaps cataract, and he wants to go under the knife. I don’t tell him that I hope he doesn’t have the surgery, that I’m scared of losing him. Instead, I pray for him to be healed so he doesn’t have to go under the knife.

Nowadays, I know I have no control over anything: my parents’ complaints, the fear of losing them to the cold grip of death before I finally find my balance in this shifting world.

In “The Slipping Away,”Chinonso Nzeh concludes his essay on a brighter note, stating his resolution to live in the moment that includes his parents.“I want to enjoy the now with them. Every moment with them holds meaning for me. I count one to ten when they provoke me; it cools the burning fury in me. I ask them if they need water or food. I call them to check up on them.”

Just like Chinonso, I do my best to live in the moment with my parents. I don’t wait for birthdays or any such precious occasions in their lives to gift them presents; I do it before, when the means unfurl. I strive to make them laugh while I continue to fill my head with the possibility of having them alive for many years. I choose to bask in the euphoria of their joy, laughter and tears.