5 5 MY DAD's HEART WAS BROKEN

We didn't wear black. My dad, my sister, and I all wore white. My sister held my hand all through the funeral service in the big Cathedral with stained windows of Saints and Apostles, as we sat in the pew and looked at the white casket in which my mum's body was laid.

We had seen her earlier that day in the casket as she lay in a white flowing silk gown.It was during her lying-in-state. It is a ceremony where they bring a dead person to the house where they lived when they were alive so that their family and friends could see them for the last time. It was in the front yard of our house. The casket was placed under a big canopy, and people sat in the chairs around it. Then they formed a line and one by one they walked by the casket, stopped beside it, murmured words no one could hear, sniffed to hold back their tears, or cried loudly. My dad led my sister and myself to the casket. His brother was behind me. When we got there, my uncle lifted me up so I could see inside the casket. I wasn't tall enough to see it myself. My breath caught in my throat as I saw my mum. She looked exactly as I remembered her, but now she was darker.

And when my sister who was in my dad's arm looked down at my mum, she whispered sweetly, "Look, Baby Girl is sleeping."

And everyone who heard her began to cry again.

At the cemetery where they had taken my mum's casket after the service at the church, there were more tears. Lots of people were crying as they put the casket into the grave that had been dug in the ground.

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My dad was carrying Boom Boom. I stood beside him and looked at all the gravestones that were around us. There were lots of them. They had different names written on them. Some even had pictures. I stood there wondering who these people were and if their families cried when they were being buried as much as my family was crying.

Then I looked closer at the smaller gravestones neatly arranged a short distance away from the place we all stood. I wanted to ask my dad if they were graves of children or animals but I knew it wasn't the place to ask questions. So, I hid it away in my mind with the intention of asking my dad later on when we were together in the car driving away from the cemetery.

When the priest finished speaking, they led my dad, my sister and I to the graveside. The grave was deep. And I could see the casket inside it. It was closed. I had a thought race through my mind that my mum was trapped in the casket and couldn't breathe. I thought I heard her call out to us, saying that we should open the casket so she could come out, but I remembered what my dad had said to me as I cried in the car on our way to the cemetery:

"Osaik, don't cry, that was not your mum in the casket, it was just her body." And when I kept crying, he continued explaining. "When people die, they leave their bodies here on earth, just like how you stop wearing old clothes that are no longer your size. So, the body is an old cloth for a person who has died. When we die, we become spirits with a soul. The soul is who we are. It is our thinking selves, the part of us that feels emotions and has a personality. It is the real us that is inside of us. The spirit is our true form. It is us inside our bodies.It is the way we are before we enter into our mother's stomachs and come into this world inside the body of a baby. When you dream and you find yourself in different places, it is your spirit that has come out of your body and travelled to those places and then comes back to your body in time for you to wake up. I don't know if you understand that?"

I shook my head, and he smiled and continued in an even warmer tone, "Look at it as a bottle of Coke, when you have it, what you really want is the coke inside the bottle and not the bottle itself. So that is how it is. The soul is the coke itself, the way it tastes, the black colour it has and the fizzles it displays. The liquid form it is in is the spirit nature of it, because everything exists in one form or the other, solid, liquid or gas. So it is with us, we are either seen or unseen. When we are seen we are in our body form, when we are unseen, we are in our spirit form; just like the coke can be in liquid form when it is warm, frozen when it is cold, and can evaporate when you boil it.Are you with me?"

I nodded and he continued, "The bottle is the body that the coke needs to exist in for you to be able to buy it, but when you finish drinking it, you no longer need the bottle and you throw it away. See, we are all like that and, right now, you have a spirit, a soul and a body and all three of them make the you that I am speaking to now. When you die, your spirit and your soul leave your body behind and move on to heaven or go up in the sky to become a star like your mum now is. You will no longer need your body, just like you no longer need old clothes."

I was a little bit scared because my dad had talked about me dying one day, but I wasn't worried because what he said finally made sense to me, so I calmed myself with the comforting thought that all that was being buried in the ground was just the clothes my mum no longer needed now that she was a star up in the sky, looking down at us, ready to answer me anytime I called out to her.

We picked up a handful of sand from the mound that was by the graveside and threw it into the grave one after the other.First, my dad, then me, and then my sister. It landed on the casket and made a rattling sound. I looked at Eghe Boom Boom to see if she was as sad as I was. She looked bored. I moved closer to her and took her hand in mine. She looked up at me and smiled.

Then she said, "Baby girl is happy now."

I was surprised at her words and looked at her with a frown. She kept smiling as though she knew a secret no one else knew.

We stood there as others threw sand into the grave. I looked up at the sky to see if my mum was looking down at us. But it was in the afternoon, and the sky was so bright that you couldn't see the stars. I decided that later that night I was going to come out of the house and call out to my mum and ask her if she was as happy as my sister had said. Then I stood there and allowed my mind to wander away until it settled on Kompa. I wished that they had allowed him to come and kick some sand into the grave as we all did, but I knew that my uncle would not have allowed it.

I looked over at my uncle. His bald head was sweaty and shiny as he mopped his red eyes with a handkerchief. It was the first time I had seen him cry since he came the morning my mum had fallen into the forever sleep. I felt sad for him but still, I couldn't wait for everybody to go back to their houses and leave me, my dad, my sister and Kompa alone.

Later that day, I asked my dad all the questions I wanted to ask. I also asked Eghe Boom Boom how she knew my mum was happy. She said in her little voice.

"She came to my room and told me."

She showed me where my mum stood in her room and what she wore and I felt sad that my mum hadn't appeared to me too. But then as I looked at my sister, I remembered that she too had the sickle cell anaemia and a deep fear gripped me because, for the first time, I realised that my sister could also fall into the forever sleep.

I hugged her close to me as Kompa looked on while wagging his tail. Later, when I walked into my dad and mum's room, I saw him curled on the floor like a little child. He had a picture of my mum in his hand and he was calling her name softly as he cried.

I didn't know what to do, so I stood there at the door and watched him, tears pooled in my eyes and my vision became blurry until Kompa nudged me and said in a low growl.

"Go and hug him."

And I did, letting my tears flow down my cheeks as I lay on the floor by his side.

Two of us.

Crying.

I hugged my dad and he put his hand around me, while Kompa stood at the door watching, making a whining sound, his tail hanging between his legs as the sounds of my sister playing in her room filtered in to add a different character to the hum of us crying.

I was all alone when I called out to my mum in the sky that night, and as I stood there looking up at the thousands of stars that decorated the night, a star winked down at me. I was sure it was my mum because I could feel her presence. My heart felt warm and a happy smile spread across my face. It was a mixture of relief and happiness because somewhere deep inside, I had hidden a fear that my mum wouldn't become a star and I would never hear or see her in any form again. I stood there telling her all that had happened since she left and asked her to take care of us as she had promised to. When I turned to walk back into the house, I saw Dauda watching me from the guardhouse. He was smiling at me.

It took my dad nearly three months to begin to smile again. He seemed to have grown older in all that time. My aunty had to move in to take care of Eghe Boom Boom and me. It was new and strange because she did all that my mum used to do for us. As she did the house chores, she even hummed some of the songs mum used to sing. They were gospel songs. It made me think about my mum, and it often made my dad stand up and walk into his room. He would have tears in his eyes. My dad's heart was broken, mine was broken too, but my sister didn't seem to be as sad as we all were, the only change that was noticeable in her was that she had begun to allow Kompa play with her.

And Kompa was ecstatic. He spent most of the time with her, and it was him who ran to the living room one Saturday afternoon barking loudly at my dad and I as we watched a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United.

We looked up at him, and he raced away down the corridor towards the bedroom after letting out two more barks.

I translated them to my dad.

"He said something is wrong with Boom Boom."

My dad jumped out of his chair and ran towards the bedroom, and I ran after him. When we got to Eghe Boom Boom's room, she was lying on her stomach on the floor, her face was turned towards the door, it was covered in sweat, her body was trembling and her mouth was opened wide but there was no sound coming out. She was staring at us and it was as if she was looking at us but not seeing us. I could recognise the look. It was the same one my mum used to have when the pain of the sickle cell anaemia seized her. Now my sister was going through the same thing; my baby sister who I had promised my mum that I would look after. My heart broke as I watched my dad run to her, kneel by her, and gently lift her off the floor.

That was the first time of the many times I would see her have a crisis that bad.

Eghe Boom Boom spent nearly a week in the hospital with my dad staying with her most of the time, while I visited with my aunty after school.

Kompa never stopped asking after her and he would spend most of his time sleeping in her room.

Then one day, my dad said to me when I got to the hospital after school. "Osaik, the doctor would like to do a test on you, to see if you are a match for an operation that can cure your sister."

It was the first time I heard about the phrase "bone marrow transplant". Three words together that weren't as wonderfully sounding as all the big words and phrases I had heard before, but it was the first phrase that practically made me happy just by simply hearing it.