When my husband died and people were coming to the house to console me, a guy came too. He said his name was George, and we were in the same church together, so when he heard the news, he decided to come and “hug the sorrow away” from me.

He held my hand in a handshake and placed his left hand on my shoulder and started encouraging me. I was crying so hard I could only see rainbows. He said, “Don’t cry too hard, my dear. It’s difficult, but I will be by you whenever you need me.”

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When he said that, I lifted up my head and looked into his face. He didn’t look like anybody I’d seen in church, but he mentioned a different branch and said he had been coming to our church often because of a friend. “Give me your number. I will call you.”

I mentioned my number through tears while he typed with a sharp thumb. After that, he hung around for hours, coming to me every now and then to ask if I needed help with something. He brought me water. He said I should drink because I was getting dehydrated through the tears I was shedding.

My mom and dad were with me on the first day. He spoke to them too and made sure my parents and siblings noticed him. He came back the next day, and the next, and the next. He was always the first to be there. I asked one day, “Don’t you go to work? I will be fine; just go about your business.” He told me he was on leave when the event happened.

My mom called him caring. My dad said he was exhibiting Christ in him for being there with me in my hardest moments. In the evenings, he would call and ask what I had to do the next day and if I needed him to run an errand for me.

My husband’s family started picking on me, calling me a witch and accusing me of killing my husband for his properties. Meanwhile, the only property my husband had in his own name was his car. He died very young, thirty-nine years old, so he didn’t have the time to build the world he dreamt of.

His family were on me, asking me to vacate our rented place so they could lock it. His junior brother came for the car keys. That day, George was there. My husband had died for only a week. George snatched the keys back from him and told him to go to hell.

It turned into an exchange of words. My brother-in-law fought fiercely to get the keys back. I called my dad. He shouted, “Don’t give it to him. I’m on my way.” George held him single-handedly until my dad got there and took over the issue. He didn’t give them the keys. My dad drove the car away that day.

That night, I stayed on the phone with George and cried my heart out. “I thought they loved me,” I said amid tears. “When my husband was alive, they were all laughing with me. I didn’t know they would behave this way towards me.”

He listened to me cry and be vulnerable. He encouraged me and even shared a story of how his family behaved towards him when his father died. “It’s normal, my dear. God is on your side, and I am always here for you. They can’t win.”

It took three weeks for them to do the one-week rite for my husband. George was there, carrying chairs and mounting canopies. I watched him from afar and asked myself, “What did I do right to deserve all this from him?”

After the one-week rite, I didn’t see him for a day, and I couldn’t sit still. He had been with me through it all, and I had grown used to his presence. He said he had resumed work. I joked, “Then my defense is cracked open now. What would I do if they attack?”

I’m not ashamed to admit that I started seeing him in romantic ways. I fantasized about being with him when all was said and done. One evening, he came to visit. Before he left, we kissed. My husband was still in the morgue. It felt so wrong. It felt like I was cheating on my husband on the eve of our wedding.

It didn’t stop there, though. It happened, I think, thrice more until I asked him what he thought of me. “Do you like me that much? Since when? Would you marry me after my widowhood rite?”

He answered yes to all my questions and told me he couldn’t wait for the storm to be over.

During the funeral, he became an integral part of everything. But one thing that kept occurring was that he would take money from me to do something, but later I would be told he didn’t pay for the things to be done. He came for money for extra chairs, but those chairs didn’t come. My dad went to buy meat with him, and he later went for extra. He didn’t pay for the extra but took money from me.

Then right after the funeral, in the deep of dawn, he visited my room when no one was watching. He said he wanted to be sure I was alright. I was scared he would be caught, but he wasn’t ready to go. He said until I kissed him, he wouldn’t. I did, for a few seconds, and then he left. As early as 6 a.m., he came to my place dressed for church.

He sat in the hall while I also got ready. I was in the bathroom when something told me I should stick my neck out and see what he was doing. The funeral contributions that people paid, I had put them in a big bowl and placed it behind the sofa. He was squatting there, opening the envelopes and stuffing the higher denominations into his trousers. I watched for a few seconds, shocked and unable to say anything. I went back in and bathed.

When I was ready and we were about to leave, I said, “Please put back the money you took from the bowl. I don’t want to have issues with the family head after church today.”

He swore he hadn’t taken anything. I said, “Oh, stop that. I saw you taking it and putting it in your trousers. If you needed money, you should have told me and not stolen from the Nsabɔdiɛ bowl.”

I asked if I should put my hand in his pocket before he, ashamedly, started to bring everything out. I checked every pocket and took everything to ensure he was empty. He said, “I don’t want you to think about it the wrong way. I was borrowing it. I was going to tell you about it. That’s not who I am.”

At church, I cried, not for my husband but for the second heartbreak. How could something this good end even before it started? Did he do all that so he could steal from me?

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So many questions, but I didn’t see him in church, and neither did I see him again afterward. I wanted to call and ask questions. I was fighting against my own judgment, making him look like a victim of circumstances so I could forgive him, but sense prevailed, and I let him go. He didn’t reach out, and I didn’t go looking for him.

—Aubynette 

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