The Best Years of Her Life Are Gone

Sloane Angelou

My biological mother died in her sleep. A lifetime after and I still cannot refer to her as mother without the prefix of "biological.”I have been unable to abandon the word like my grandmother asked me to do so many times. For me that would mean abandoning her. I could never get them to understand.

The day before she passed, I could feel my father standing heavy by my door; he stood heavy refusing to move. My father had died almost a year before my mother, yet there he was — a heavy ghost, standing. I knew something was amiss, yet I turned my back against the weight of his presence, and tried to go to sleep.

"Come sit beside me my dear. Come sit beside me. Yesterday your mother went to sleep forever, she needed the rest. Give me a hug my child."

Grandmother always seemed to talk in poetry, her voice, music to my ears. if she had said anything less gentle to expose my mothers death to me I would have still given her a hug. I loved my grandmother dearly, so I told her about my father's visit the night before. We all saw it coming, mother's death I mean, she did not really die in her sleep, she died of heartbreak. It's only always a matter of time before a broken spirit slips into the heart, makes attempts to set itself free and if the heart is willing enough it will set it free indeed. To lose your children and then your husband to avoidable circumstances, that could kill anyone. Grandmother always said my biological mother was never the kind of woman to waste life on hopeless endeavors, so it made sense to me that she would die shortly after her world (my father & her children) was ripped from under her breasts.

Shaved heads. Kin women sitting half naked under the sun. We dug a grave in her private quarters. Turned her room into a burial ground, as tradition required, stories of her youth were shared in that same room. White chalk — Nzu rubbed on faces. We costumed the night with wailing and dancing. Drinking spirit water — Kaikai as a form of comfort. Women breaking kola nuts without pushback. Red clothes tied to furniture. My mother's body laid down upon a center table in her father's living room. We shared a meal of freshly slaughtered meat, fresh ọkụkọ which did not have time to understand its death. Several pats on the back like a shared hug, then silence — direct kin could not speak for a whole week unless spoken to. Dark colored clothes had to be worn because she presumably died young, even though those of us who were kin knew that women lived longer than we could ever dare. This was how we mourned my biological mother, a woman who deserves remembrance in my belly. A chief in her lifetime. An Ada of an onowu, her father's daughter.

Who would dare sleep in that room after she was buried there? I kept wondering to myself, over a dead body. That night before I went to sleep I looked towards the door of my room, my father was not there anymore. You must never speak ill of the dead, they say this as a cultural thing. But thank God I have never really been accustomed to anything other than myself, so I can tell you without consequence that I never really liked my father. He was not a kind man. What's true is I did not know the man well enough to like him. So it was really no wonder that all he could do was stand heavy in the dark to alert me of his wife's passing. He beat that woman while he was alive, once a week or so and as he grew older it became less frequent and unspoken of like an open secret, once a month then once every other month, then occasionally once a year he would throw something at her, until he died. Yet she loved him with a fearful devotion.

"If you have a child maybe your father can come back and live long this time and your mother, too. Think about it. Or me, what about me? Won't you like to carry your grandmother."

Yes I am willing to carry my grandmother and maybe my biological mother, the miracles of spirit culture — reincarnation — to be able to become a mother to one's own mother's within the same lifetime. What a gift death could become. As for my father, if I had to bring him back to life then I would remain childless. What a gift to be able to make such a choice. The power to quench unnecessary life. The suffering of resisting repetition. Alternatively, since I refuse to mother my father, grandmother told me he could come back every year, during certain seasons as a masquerade to perform at the market square or at the king's palace. She said if I saw him I would know and if I called out his name, the masquerade would twirl like a weightless thing to look for its name. But my mother, my biological mother, could not come back as a masquerade because she was a woman. And I would have to bear children in hopes of carrying her or leave her fate to dust.

How about rest grandmother, rest. How about resting? Grandmother at what point do the dead rest. At what point does death lose its hold on my life? At what point does my life belong to me?

"Come sit by my side child, come sit with me. Give me a hug my child. Never mind death, grandmother is here."