Death is a Paradox

Dear brother, Thaddeus Oche Ogiri, 

January, 1988, you came into the world as a promising, very handsome boy. Mum and dad loved you. We, your eldest siblings, loved you too. We watched you grow up quickly. However, 11years later, mama died and everything changed. You became a man from age 11. You were not deterred. 

From that very tender age, you had your dreams. You nursed your dreams. You wanted to be a medical doctor. I encouraged you to go for the pure sciences since I did not offer the pure sciences. You agreed. Yes, we needed to make mama proud wherever she was by not giving up. Going hard against the tides towards success would be the noblest way to honour the memory of our late mum, the young woman who bore so much pains and sacrificed so much of her comfort that she died in her prime.

I did not have the wherewithal to finance both of us. You said I should not worry about you. Immediately after your primary education, you enrolled yourself in a private school to study the sciences even without my sponsorship while I went to Kaduna in search of jobs and knowledge. I succeeded in getting the knowledge through self sponsorship but ill-health denied you the opportunity to continue your studies. 

For several years, placed on a prolonged medication, you bore the pains of syringes and humiliations of ill-health and public shame with a gallant fervour until routine drugs began to irritate you. You went far away from your drugs. You became weak and tired. You needed rest. And so, today being 18th August, 2022, you succumbed to the pangs and fangs of death with its domineering cruelty. It hurts my brother. You have broken my heart again. 

We were only three boys and two girls alive. Why should you perish when you could have stayed healthy and alive with Raphael and I to build our family again?

I promise I won't cry even if I pant for breath in the most tormenting and turbulent ocean of tears.

I hope you see mama soon and tell her you could not hold on anymore and so you decided to quit this crazy land of the living. 

I hope you are now resting. For the rest you have been desperately yearning for has finally come to you. 

Broken free from the chains of the flesh, you can now rise and take your place among the saints who have already triumphed. 

The Lebanese Poet, Khalil Gibran, probed rhetorically the paradox of death:

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

    And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

    Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

    And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

    And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."

Indeed, with the cessation of your breath, you can now stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun; your breath can now be freed from its restless tides that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered. 

Now that you have drunk from the rivers of silence, you can begin to sing songs of victory. Now that you have reached the mountain top, you can now begin to climb. Now that the earth has finally claimed your limbs, you can now begin to truly dance for you have fought a good fight and have now won the race. Indeed,  death is a paradox. It is a beautiful enigma. 

Rest in peace my dearly beloved brother. 

Good bye my blood, Master Thaddeus Oche Ogiri until we meet to part no more.

©️Ogiri John Ogiri.