A Few Thoughts On Mortality
When you're a law student, one of the first few topics you're taught in Law of Torts is Negligence. I learned this in my first year as a diploma student: a duty of care owed by the X; X breaches that duty causing harm in B. There are more elements, and it's slightly more technical than this, but those are the basics. In the past few weeks, I've told people, just in casual conversation about how I've never used my degree/legal licence for anything, and that some of the knowledge remains redundant, sometimes floating up to the surface. This week, it was different.
Two people I know died. Two. One and two. One was an aunt. The other was someone I knew from secondary school. An Igbo teacher put up her picture and cause of death on the alumni group, and I gasped no. In the evening, my brother asked for an uncle's number. When he asked, I automatically assumed he (my brother) wanted to congratulate him (my uncle) on the birth of his child. A small feeling told me something was wrong. Small feelings exist. That thing telling you, don't go out, don't do this or do this, they actually exist. It's often attributed it God, or intuition, etc. I don't know what it is, but sometimes, block out the noise and listen. I ignored it. A few minutes later, he sent a text to ask if I'd heard what happened. I didn't know what had happened, I shouted no, no, no, no, as if my nos would reveal or stop whatever it was. Eventually I found out what happened — his wife, my aunt had died. I also found out it was hospital negligence. You walk in with complaints about this and that and they send you home. Now with the person from secondary school, Fatima, I don't know that it was negligence. But she'd fallen ill very briefly and then puff, died. Quite similar with my aunt's. She'd had a baby last month, went back to the hospital complaining about headaches. She was sent home without the hospital requesting for tests etc. Only drugs were given to her. She went into a coma shortly after and then died on Monday.
Again, the little voice: for weeks after my mum told me my aunt had given birth, I put off a call to check in and congratulate her. Consumed in so much work, in self — my own worries, my own needs. I didn’t. Now, I’ll never hear her voice or see her smiling face.
I cried. I bawled. At night, on the way to work, in the middle of meetings. Then I heard of Moradeun's death, mindlessly followed conversations about how a hospital turned her away asking for a police report before a wound could be treated. I stalked her social media pages, went through her sister and boyfriend's social pages. What were they feeling? How would they move on? And seeing the allegations of negligence against the hospital, I knew it would hurt even more. My thoughts about these are rabbit-hole-deep. But you know what's helping me survive? (Other than faith?)
Music. From Timi Dakolo’s Christmas album to Tomiwa's Abba.
These deaths are reminders of my mortality. We’re never better off than the ones that leave. Don’t live life “in a hurry”. Make time to check in on your loved ones and say a prayer for the stranger that passes by you on the street. You never really know.