My mom was diabetic. She managed it gracefully. She didn’t eat what doctors said she shouldn’t eat. She didn’t drink anything that wasn’t in consonant with her situation. She visited the hospital often and got new rules to help her manage her situation. My dad used to tease her; “We all will die one day whether we eat sugar or not so why don’t you eat it?”

My mom didn’t succumb to Dad’s bad advice. She lived by the rules and lived with diabetes for over twenty years. In the end, it wasn’t diabetes that killed her. It was a stroke that had the final say.

Dad called me one early morning and told me to leave everything I was doing and come home. When I got home, Mom wasn’t there. He told me she had suffered a stroke and had been admitted. I went to the hospital with him. He sat next to my mom and held her hands while whispering things to her. I didn’t hear everything but I heard a prayer, motivation and then I heard “We’ll walk home very soon. Don’t worry.”

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My elder sister is a doctor. She came to see Mom a week after admission because she was far away. After assessing her thoroughly, she whispered in my ears, “It doesn’t look good. It will take a miracle.”

All our lives, we’d been carried by a miracle so a miracle didn’t sound like something that we had to struggle to have. Being able to get an education was a miracle. We were five. Dad and mom didn’t have money. They owed everyone in their circle but we all went to the university. Having a three square meal as kids was a miracle. My dad built a six-bedroom house after all the hardship. That was also a miracle. So, when my sister mentioned miracle, it felt like a next-door neighbour I could call and talk to. I sighed and responded, “She’ll get better, I believe in miracles.”

Every day I went to visit, Dad was sitting next to her, holding her hands and whispering. I saw love and asked, “Has my dad always loved my mom this way? How come I didn’t see it?”

I watched them and missed being in love. Every woman I’d loved deeply was taken away from me by another man or by another situation I had no control over. So approached love with caution. I had a woman I knew was good for me but I couldn’t love her wholly because I was scared she would leave and break me up again. I loved with caution but I looked at my dad threw caution into the air and loved my mom deep enough to whisper sweet nothings into her ears after being married for over forty years.

My sister who’s a doctor came to visit again. She saw my mom and cried. She told me, “If you have something to say to your mom, say it now. She’s going.” I got angry and said in my head, “Are you a better doctor than the ones taking care of her? Why do you see death when they haven’t seen anything.”

I stood there hoping for a miracle because ‘miracle’ had been our lifetime friend. My sister was right. Mom died a few hours later. It looked like my dad also saw it coming. He didn’t cry when he was told my mom had died. He slipped quietly out of the hospital and didn’t return.

Mom died eight years ago but the events leading to her death never left me. I learned more from my dad in that short time than I’d done all my life. We didn’t see our dad being physically expressive when it came to loving my mom. The times they fought registered loudly in our memories than the times they loved each other but on her sick bed, Dad was a different man. He was like a stranger.

After the funeral, we did our best to take him out of that huge house he built for his family and his wife. He didn’t want to move. He gave excuses and reasons but over time, I’d come to realize why he didn’t want to move out of that house: Mom’s memories.

Everything is still the same around that house. The positions of photo frames haven’t changed. Mom’s wardrobe is still full of her clothes. They had a chamber pot next to the bed. Dad always complained about it. He hated to hear the sound of my mom peeing at dawn. He screamed, “How far is the washroom that you can’t walk there?” Today, I can imagine him giving everything he has just to hear Mom pee again.

That chamber pot is still next to the bed, though he doesn’t use it. He’s doing everything to keep Mom around. I can imagine him talking to her in his sleep or caressing her hands in his dream.

Four years ago, I married the same woman I was dating when my mom was sick. The one I said I couldn’t love totally because I was scared. Slowly I let go because what do I have to lose? I’d learned enough from my dad to know that we don’t have much time here to concentrate on fights, disappointments and heartbreaks. These things are part of life, it comes, it goes but we’ll be here living the memories so we have to make it a good one.

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Since we got married, I’ve been expressive with love. I don’t say it often but I act it out every day. I hold hands, I touch, I’m graceful during misunderstandings, I give it my all so I don’t have to sit next to a sick bed trying to give all that I didn’t give. I’ve learned that from my father and I believe it will be the biggest legacy he’s left for his last born. A gift he didn’t know he left behind.

— Agyapong

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