17/07/2020
Tell me that I could have it all
Tell me that I wouldn't change at all
Tell me this road is not too long
~ Dreamer Girl by Asa
14/04/2013. Lagos, Nigeria ~ Queeneth's departure from India.
Meeting with Boluwatife, the boy who was suffering from bone cancer was the highlight of my trip to India. Imminent death was so very evident in his physical features and I could tell that every time I saw him on his wheelchair, the least he could ever do was to take in every chaff of air he could before a permanent cessation of breath dominates.
I felt even worse for his mother and I tried to imagine how depressed and utterly dejected my mother would have felt if I was the one who had bone cancer. I don't even think my mother would be able to survive, seeing me rot away slowly; beauty fading into decayed ashes but seeing his mother doing her best to always be of good cheer and more still, constantly being so nice to me even when she was hurting very badly on the inside, made my heart so heavy with guilt and compassion.
I wished I could help her feel a little better than she was truly feeling. I wanted to tell her to stop being so nice to me; to admonish her to just express the pain and the intense hurt that she was actually feeling but there was no way I possibly could because she masked her pain so well that it didn't seem like my efforts to make her feel any better would be much appreciated.
So I just stayed respectful to her and always listened to the things she had to say to me with rapt attention. She loved to talk to me about faith and loved to admonish me to always have faith in God and be strong. One of the days, when she came to visit my dad and I our hotel room, she said to me;
"I know your mum would call you names like "oko mi." She said with the saddest yet the most compassionate smile on her face while I nodded in agreement to her assumption. Oko mi is a word Yoruba Mother's loved to call their children which means, "my beloved."
She was right and I couldn't agree any less with her. Then she went on to talk to me about trusting and having faith in God concerning my legs, carrying my cross with endurance for the light at the end of the tunnel and inevitably, it made me wonder how the word, "faith" or anything in resemblance to it must have countlessly infuriated her.
I knew it definitely must have because on some days, trusting in God for her son's health must have really felt like a harsh, brutal sting in her heart and holding on to that faith regardless of the fact that it must have been the size of a mustard seed must have been felt so impossible and absolutely derailing.
Watching her talk to me about faith honestly felt so ironical despite the fact that I didn't wish to feel that way by listening to her. It made me feel so many things and wonder about so many things as well. I respected her so much and saluted her ability to stay strong for her son, because she was doing an amazing job at it, from all I could see.
Because really, If any of you reading this had seen that boy, you would cry. If you don't cry, your heart would ache unbearably because it was indeed a pathetic site; Making an attempt to even think of all the pain he must have been through made me realize that the sum total of all the pain i had been feeling must have been nothing compared to what he has been feeling ever since the birth of that terminal disease. Mine was very, very fickle compared to his.
All though, I have never really felt like I had the worse physical defect on earth, meeting Boluwatife reminded me of the fact that there were many people with worse situations than mine; there definitely was.
It was a blessing to have met the woman and her son because they were so amazing to my dad and I and then, I had began to wish that I could stay back in India just so I could see the end results of all the medical processes, Boluwatife had been undergoing at the hospital.
For some reason, I truthfully felt on so many occasions that he was going to die but whenever the image of his mother hearing the news of her son's death came to my mind, my heart became so very sore and head would start to ache even before I could try to picture her mien on getting the most heartbreaking news of her life.
But I never got to see Boluwatife and his mother again because it was time for me to go back home to Nigeria with my Dad. We had spent a week at the hospital and two weeks at the hotel room, making it a total of a fun-less, three week trip to New Delhi, India.
I was happy anyway because I was already dying to go back home but after meeting Bolu and his mum, The haste to go back home slowed down; a subordinate part of me wanted to stay at least one more week just to spend time with the boy and his mum because crossing paths with them transformed my stay in India from meaningless, boring and tiring to meaningful, insightful and eye opening.
But the dominant part of me that wanted to see my siblings again was hard at work. It made the cause seem much more appealing and promising than staying back. I was still very tired of staying in once place, bored, sometimes lonely and sick in an hotel room.
Although, engaging myself in drawing activities to kill boredom and the gnawing feeling of loneliness did a fair share of it's work, I still could not help but wish on some days to enjoy the best of India but I never got that and we did not get to see Bolu and his mum all the time so i still got bored sometimes.
At that point, the saying, "there is no place like home" started to hit really hard like a metal rod clanging on steel.
**
We had woken up very early in the morning so we would not miss our morning flights back to Nigeria so we had gotten to the airport on time; it was cold and chilly again just like it had been when I first arrived. Looking at the street lights and the entire environment around me as the car drove faster towards the airport, it hit me that I was actually leaving India but I didn't feel like staying back any longer. I could not wait to get to the airport.
When we got to the airport, something beautiful happened; I was given a seat in the business class when my dad had only paid for the economy class but of course, there was no way I could stay in the business class with my legs stretched forward, bound in a cast. I could not jerk my knees like every other human being with a properly functioning leg would.
So, my dad has to persuade one of the aircraft personnel to let us have a seat in the business class and somehow I was able to stay in the business class which was quite the miracle as it originally was an impossible thing.
The flight back home was a tad bit worse than the flight we took on arriving at India because I gave my dad a really tough time.
But it wasn't entirely my fault.
I urgently needed to use the restroom in the airplane and for some reason, since I couldn't, I shat on myself; in the diaper I was wearing. I guess the toilet was occupied when I was feeling very pressed. I kept telling my dad, "I want to poo poo" but there was no way he could tell the person using the restroom at that moment to exit the place for me but the poo would just not hold on for a little longer. It would not even consider the fact that I could not walk to the restroom myself so when I shat on my diaper instead of shitting in the restroom, it was an entire mess.
I felt so bad for my dad because he had to help me clean up in the toilet; changing a diaper full of poo and all and then imagining the smell of it probably disturbing other passengers in the plane. It was so embarrassing.
Hours later though, it was all good. I kept ordering for more and more bread from the air hostesses who worked in the plane because the bread tasted really good. Then I met this handsome host from Argentina who was so kind to me since we had to stop over at Dubai again to board another airplane.
Seeing the landscape below from the airplane's window, I saw the view of Lagos; green fields and rusted bungalow roofs. The pilot was staring to make announcements as to how we were to fasten our seatbelts since the airplane was starting to land.
It was a long, long, journey but it felt good to be finally home.
**
Getting back home did not seem any special. I mean, our house still looked the same; boring and next to a very high hill covered with big, tall trees like a portion from a thick forest. I mean, I guess it didn't seem so special because my sister did not look very happy to see me.
I knew without a doubt that my siblings and my mum missed me. It was for sure because my mum would tell me tales and tales on end of how she and my siblings were missing my dad and I whenever we spoke on the phone but they were not showing that they missed me, telling from their behavior, especially that of my younger sister. I mean, I was really expecting her to scream or something when she sees me at the gate alone.
But she was just looking at me, with an expression that I couldn't really read. I gave her the same look in return because I was wondering why she was looking so dark skinned and unkempt.
Later on, I got to know why she didn't seem too happy to see me.
"I thought you were going to come back home walking with straight legs. I was not expecting to see you on a wheelchair." She had told me.
I could not be mad at her for being disappointed because I could understand where she was coming from. I wished I could walk too. In fact, I was dying from waiting for the day I would finally be able to walk again.
My little brother who was a year old was on the other hand, looking at me with so much pity in his small eyes and would not stop asking me why my legs looked they looked in the cast and why I was seating on a wheelchair.
Being at home was not so amazing either. In fact, I had began to wish that I could go back to India again. All I did while I was at home, was nothing and I hated not having anything to do but I could deny the amount of care I got from my family.
My mum took really good care of me; she would bathe me gently like a kid; she would always help me scrub my body with a sponge while I seat on a big plastic chair in the bathroom and whenever she was about to rinse the soap lather away from my body with water, she did it carefully so the water would not drip down into the plaster as excessive contact with the water makes the plaster ooze forth an offensive odor.
And she loved to pray for me a lot while bathing for me. It always made my heart warm.
Whenever I wanted to seat on the living room's couch too, my dad or our house help would carry me from the wheelchair and place time gently on the chair. I was treated like a baby and it actually felt so good to see every member of my family care so much for me.
But I was still bored. My younger sister could go to school and my brother was at crèche school as well and of course my parents had to go to work. I could not possibly go to school for the next three months because bones take time to heal and I had to be extra patient with everything.
I thought I would not survive staring at home for that painfully long period of time but I actually pulled through. The house help that my mother employed was a very lively person so she kept me company a lot of times and made me laugh a lot.
I went back to drawing full time and I took it to another dimension. Since i had been pondering on how I could be useful to my church for quite a while, I decided to make colorful artworks for my church despite how childish and imperfect they looked and honestly, it really worked out for me because I derived so much joy from it. I drew each work from the depths of my heart and it made me happy.
It gave me a good sense of belonging and it helped eliminate the boredom I was always feeling because I had something to look forward to since I loved doing it and I could spend the entire week, thinking of what biblical image to draw next and what message to put underneath it. It was a great source of happiness and it was the birth of all the dreamiest imaginations I harbored in my mind thereafter.
Every Saturday, I would get a cardboard and draw in the way I could draw; I could draw heaven, hell or even Jesus in the best visual image I had in mind. I could draw blind or lame people on the road, begging for alms and I would write messages underneath it like, "Give to the poor." And I could draw people crying out loud and gnashing their teeth, painting the flames in blunt colored orange pencils, burning in hell with a message underneath like, "Hell is Real." And a short explanation to broaden the topic.
Since I obviously could not go to church, members from my church beautifully reached out to me every week to teach me the week's Sunday school lesson. I mean, it was beautiful to know that I really mattered to everyone and I really appreciated their time and efforts just to ensure that I also receive the word God had for me every week.
I decided that I would get a drawing done every week and on Sundays when my Sunday school lesson teachers came, I gave them my artworks so they could help me paste it on the walls of the children's church.
My church pastors recognized the work I was doing for the church so they came to visit one Sunday morning to commend me for the contributions I was making for the church.
It was a blessing.
Since I also could not go to school during that period of my life, I could not see my classmates as well which made me miss them greatly but one afternoon, I was swept off my feet when six of my classmates showed up at my living room; the school bus has bought them over to my place. It was clear that they volunteered to come see me.
They looked really cute in their school uniforms and for some reason, I wished I was wearing it too.
My childhood friend, Sarah came, Michael, Bisola, And three other classmates were smiling at me as I sat, glued to where I was but was undeniably the happiest person in the universe.
I felt so blessed and so loved. Everyone had been looking out for me and had came to see me at home simply because I mattered so much. I knew I was not alone and knowing that was a real, blessing true blessing.