If Patrick were still here, I’d have gotten a present today. He’d have serenaded me, taken me for dinner and did unspeakable things when the lights went off. If Patrick were still here, I’d have smiled so much today that my cheeks would hurt. If Patrick were still here. I wouldn't be writing this.
“I cannot breathe” I remember saying this as I held my protruding tummy and the driver's hands for stamina. I really could not. I just saw you. You kissed me and said I should take care. That was a minute ago. So, what does Bode mean that you died an hour ago? They shot my Patrick.
“To love and to hold till death do us part”, when we said this, I thought we meant when we got old. Nothing prepared me for the parting just 20 months into marriage. You fooled me. You promised to be here. You swore you would be the best father to Chisom. You liar, you did not even wait to meet her. You told me I will get anything I wanted as a push gift. Why was I then in the labour room alone?
They say it gets better, they lied. Here I am, sitting in this dark room, holding on to your picture and wishing to die. It’s hard. The things your family did to me in the name of tradition. I swore I never liked your mom. “She hates me Patrick and looks at me funny”. You swore she just had a resting bitch face. Her face was not resting when she took the house and threw me out. It was not resting when she kept shouting that I killed her son and spat on me. It was not resting when she said I gave birth to a witch like me and could not even give you a male child to carry your legacy.
Chisom cried every night and I never got to sleep. I carried her and stared at your clothes because that was all she had as proof that you existed till your brothers took them all. I have fought, I have cried, and I have lost everything. Patrick, you promised me the world and told me you were never letting go. Not only did you leave, but I also had to leave my self-esteem at your burial. The things those old women did to your love, Patrick. They shaved my hair, the one thing you loved so much. Then, they starved me. I had no right eating when I am mourning, they said. They placed your wife on a mat beside their idols for three days, no sleeping and no eating. Patrick, every time I tried to say No, they said Afterall, I killed you.
I killed the one person that meant more than life to me, held me down and made sure I was always happy. The house is always quiet. No one is playing music because they bring memories. Chisom held my legs and cried on Father’s Day because all her friend's daddies were present for the party in school. I looked around and started to cry too.
It has been hard, and it gets harder. They call me widow, I answer. I have not seen your brother since he came for your car the other day. The same Boniface that was at ours every weekend. On your burial day, they burnt the black I had been wearing and told me to wear it to your burial. I wanted to celebrate the short time you stayed here. The Patrick that teased me for my pointed nose and quirky fashion sense. I wanted to look at your coffin and tell you how much I loved you. I wanted to promise you that Chisom would never lack anything.
Instead, I was staring at your coffin and crying. Not only did I have to see your body covered with blood the day you died, but I also had to live with that image in my head since then. You deserved better because you were a good man but the way you died? No one should die that way. I never unpacked the box you took for that trip. I just stared at it hoping you’d walk in singing ‘mirrors’ as you always did. From dust we came, to dust we shall return.
They took you, blamed me for it, then took everything you ever had. Everything! down to your under wears. The only proof I have for Chisom that she had a dad are all the funny videos we made. Today is my birthday and I cried more than last year because today, a colleague gifted me a bag.
I miss you. I do. Bode still thinks I am crazy each time I tell him you came to my office few minutes before he entered to tell me you died an hour ago. He swears it's the trauma. You came. I teased and said you were obsessed with me, and you laughed and kissed me, told me to take care and left.
I hold on to that. You loved me even in death. I love you. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, even after death did us part.
“And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief” — William Cullen Bryant
Image by lexonart
P.s don’t forget to clap 50 times🤗
