I’m my mother’s only daughter. I was only twenty-three when she started talking to me about marriage. She said she couldn’t wait for me to get married so she could see the children I would bring forth. Then she would end with, “You have to do it with a man who’ll love you enough to stay.”

That advice didn’t come from a vacuum. It came from her own experience of love. My dad was a divorcee who was still in love with his ex-wife. My mom didn’t know that, so she allowed herself to get pregnant for him.

Unfortunately for her, my dad and his ex-wife settled their issues and got back together. My mom never forgave him.

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She didn’t want my story to be like hers so she preached to me all the time. That made me picky. I wanted the kind of man my mom described to me. So once we talked and engaged for a while and I didn’t see any crazy amount of love from him, I disengaged.

When I was twenty-eight, I settled for James. I took him to meet my mom, but I don’t know what my mom saw. She didn’t trust him. I would ask what was wrong, and she wouldn’t have anything to say except to ask me if I believed in James’s heart.

I wanted to have kids so my mom would feel fulfilled. I wanted to be married to show my mom I was capable of finding a man who would stay. I desperately wanted James to be that man so excused his bad behaviour. He would take my money and not return it. He would borrow from me and later say he’d forgotten. He didn’t give me anything in the relationship, but I convinced myself I wasn’t with him because of what he could give me.

I asked him to marry me, and he asked if I had money for the wedding. We’d dated for two years, and there was nothing to show for it. My mom kept reminding me that a man who loved me wouldn’t go this long without talking about marriage.

Before our relationship could clock three years, my mom died. She wasn’t sick or bedridden. One headache and dizziness took her to the hospital, and she didn’t return. I was broken beyond measure. I slumped into the abyss of depression. I didn’t see life around me.

Two weeks after my mom’s death, James left me. His reason was that I loved the death of my mom more than him. I had totally ignored him since my mom died, and he couldn’t deal with it.

It didn’t hurt. I had too much hurt in my heart to make space to hurt over him.

I started dreaming about my mom days after her burial. Sometimes, I would wake up and wouldn’t remember what the dream was about. Then one day, in a dream, I was narrating how my relationship with James had ended. She listened to me and was smiling. When I finished my narration, she asked, “Raymond did this to you?”

“Who’s Raymond? I’m telling you about James,” I said.

I went to work and was talking to a colleague about it, and she said, “Maybe your mom is leading you to another man. Dreams like this don’t just happen.”

I called her superstitious.

On my mom’s one-year anniversary, I posted a video of myself dancing on Facebook, and an old friend sent me a message.

“Oh, is your mom dead? My condolences.”

In school, we called him Kweku Adjei, one of those characters who was always in trouble. We talked on Facebook for a while, and he took my number. Three months later, our past had morphed into our future. He proposed, and I accepted.

One year ago, after dating for thirteen months, I walked beside him down the aisle of the church to take our vows.

During the vows, the pastor asked, “So Raymond, do you take Freda to be your lawfully wedded wife? If so, answer, ‘I do.'”

Then it hit me.

The dream.

I opened my eyes wide as if I was looking at the eighth wonder of the world. Then the tears started falling.

Raymond Kweku Adjei.

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That’s his full name, but no one ever called him Raymond. I’d even forgotten that was part of his name.

One day, I told him, “Do you know my mom mentioned your name to me even before you said hello? My friend said she was leading me to a man, and I called her superstitious. Or was it just a coincidence?”

He thought it was one of my jokes just to make him feel loved, but I’m the one who saw it, and it makes me believe this had been written long ago and was meant to happen just the way it did.

The universe has done its part. How we make it work now depends on us. I’m ready, and he’s also ready. We only pray for God’s direction and strength.

—Maabena

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