MY LOVE! BUDDY MU!
“Like sands through the hourglass so are the days of our lives.” My love, life is infinite and fleeting. Once the sands run out, our time has come to return to our heavenly home.
Liutprand, a French Monk invented the first hourglass or sand clock in the 8th Century AD. He knew that to flip the hourglass signifies the cycle between Life and death. The journey from cradle to the grave.
Alas! Your cycle came to an end on the 8th of February, 2024.
Our journey in search of solution to your health challenges was a harrowing and tortuous one but we trudged on with Faith in God Almighty that you will recover and you did but came October, 2023, you spent our birthday in the hospital.
We share the same birthday with my twin sister, Senior as you fondly called her.
Our Wedding Anniversary and New Year’s Day we also spent in the hospital.
Despite these, I was resolute that you will make it and so were you.
On that fateful Thursday Morning of the 8th of February, 2024, I was weary on account of the tempo of your breathing and I called the Doctors and Nurses. I went close to your hospital bed as I usually do daily but this time,
I did not sit down. I held your hand, looking at your face, you held on to my hand with a firm grip. You raised your eyes and gave me a hard look. You raised your eyes a second time, put them down and shut them gently and your grip went lame. The oxygen stopped.
I said calmly, “Daddy” “Daddy” “Daddy” (as I jokingly called you when you called me Mummy) and I asked, Richard is this the end? There was no response, I still held onto your hand. Your body was warm.
I said to Abiodun, your Uncle is still warm, could it be that he is still breathing? In our usual manner, I planted a kiss on your lips but you did not move or opened your eyes.
The Doctors and Nurses covered you from head to toe and asked me to leave the room. I refused. I just sat there. I kept opening and closing the shroud. I was there for about 30 minutes with Abiodun until it dawned on me that you were truly gone to be with your maker. The giver of life deemed it fit to call you to Himself at HIS own good time, I said.
I was advised not to question God but I did. I asked HIM why HE did this and I am still waiting for an answer. I believe that HE is going to answer me someday. When we met again in Chicago, Illinois, USA in 2006, after donkey years, we knew that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
The 18 years we spent together, after many years that we lost contact with each other were beautiful, wonderful, peaceful and intense.
My love, my Knight in the Shinning armour. When I chose you to be my husband, I did not apply the world’s criteria and standard. I chose you based on my own peculiar standard and I was not wrong. I will choose you again, My love, Buddy mu! I believed that we would grow old and bent together. Chukwuma.
Our children, Richard land Rachael, our “DOUBLE DELIGHT” is the best gift you left me. I wonder each day, when I wake up, how we can ever carry on without you. It is very hard and traumatising. You forgot that we are the Quartet, Ike (Diokpa), Richard (Daddy Chicago), Chinye (Mummy Asaba) who you called “Senior” and Ngozi (Mummy Lagos).
We could take on the world together. Richard, why did you do this? One part of the Quartet is gone. Ewoo!
You affectionately called me “My Mamacita” but as the years went by you started to call me Mummy, “Mummy Lagos” as our numerous children called me, in order for them to differentiate myself from my twin sister and I would say, you American bushman. why do you call me Mummy? Why not My Mamacita and you would retort, “You will not understand.”
The sun never sets on our arguments which were few and far between. Before we went to bed, we become buddies again. You have a way of making me giggle after an argument; you over pampered me to the extent that I could hardly do anything for myself. You dotted on the children and I.
You showered us with love unending. Your fiery temper was never channelled towards me, not once. You are a meticulous man, fastidious, impeccably and extremely clean. Very humble. A man of character and integrity. A fighter against injustice.
You have your flaws who doesn’t, but I couldn’t care less. I focused on your positive side.
My love, you are a great guy, my friend, my lover, my husband, father of my lovely and beautiful twins, my brother, my father, my adviser, my confidant, my handy man, my protector, my defender, my warrior and my very supportive husband.
You were everything and everything to me. My love, Buddy mu, anyi ga fu na yard as we usually ended our phone calls.
This time, it will be on the first Resurrection Morning. Kachifo Richard, Baba Richo, Richie Cole, Rich-man, my handsome, loving and beloved husband. You have entered your rest.
Rest on Dim Oma.
YOUR MAMACITA BONITA WIFE.
