DANIELLA✔

Chapter thirty-eight

Mama's funeral was done in the village a month after her demise. She was buried right in front of our house in the village. It was a grand ceremony, I must admit, that even the villagers couldn't get over it that easily. They kept paying a visit to our house to laud aunt Caro and uncle Henry for giving mama a befitting burial ceremony. But no matter how splendid the ceremony was, nothing could heal the deep hole mama's death drilled in my heart. I mean, how could the claws of death just snatch away from me the one woman that took care of me when there were no parents to? The one woman that suffered for my sake. The woman that went through a lot for me just so that I would be alive.

I vividly remember the story she told me when I was little of how she narrowly escaped death all because she didn't want me to die. On that fateful day, mama had gone to the farm to fetch firewood, carrying me at her back. I was very young, probably two or three years old. I was terribly sick-in fact, I was always sick during my toddler days. So I was terribly sick that day that mama couldn't leave me at home with papa owing that papa himself was a very busy man and he probably couldn't watch over me throughout till mama came back.

When mama had finished fetching the fire woods, she carried it on her head and headed back home. On her way, two men attacked her by ambush and began to advance towards her, holding knives in their hands.

Mama was so petrified that she screamed and threw the firewood she was carrying on the floor and made a run for it. The men chased after her as she ran through thick bushes. Sharp objects had pierced into her feet, sharp edges of some leaves had also cut her skin, but she didn't stop running. Her survival meant my survival, so she had to make sure the guys that wanted to harm her didn't catch up with her. How she managed to escape them despite the fact that she had me at her back is still amazing up till this moment. She told me she had climbed a tree and the "mean men" ran past her. 

And that was it!

Mama had no idea why they wanted to harm us, but ever since that ugly experience, she didn't take me along with her to the farm again till I grew a little older.

Asides that, there had been other times where mama had gone through thorns to make sure she didn't lose me, but that's a story for another day.

Just like me, papa hadn't recovered from mama's death. As if loosing all his children except aunt Caro wasn't enough, he had now lost the love of his life. The flesh of his flesh and the bone of his bone. Losing the others might have hurt him, but losing mama certainly did more than that. He was shattered. He was depressed. He didn't have the appetite for food. He was always alone, sitting close to mama's grave and soliloquising.

Day and night, he sobbed. I had always known papa to be a strong and agile man, so seeing that his life had come apart at the seams even punctured my heart the more.

Why? Why did mama have to leave so soon?

This was the same question that I asked myself as I was laying in my bed reminiscing about those moments I spent with mama. It was two weeks after mama's burial and aunt Caro, her family and I had moved back to the city. Before we left the village, we left a trusted house help with papa to assist him with the chores. I volunteered to stay back, but aunt Caro insisted I followed them to the city.

Everyone in the house seemed to have forgotten about mama and had moved on with their normal lives. This ought to be the case with me. I ought to have stopped mourning over a dead and buried person. But I couldn't. This person happened to be one that I owed a lot to. Mama was one of the reasons why I was even going to school.

I had always aspired to complete my education with good grades, get a job, buy a car for mama and shower her with several other gifts, but now she was gone. She was gone! Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. It was so painful.