The Dead Talk

To the friends and family, we have lost. You are the real heroes. You have finished the fight.

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The casket was lowered gently. The four men hoisting the four edges carefully as if it was the most treasured prize they had handled yet. They were nothing compared to the near psychotic morgue attendants that had bundled him among other unidentified bodies awaiting positive identification. Unperturbed, they had frisked all his pockets with little return. ‘What a shame he couldn’t even donate his organs, a fine young man,’ the first attendant chuckled. ‘Had you found his kidneys maybe you wouldn’t be tiring on me in the middle of a postmortem. Do you know how much work you leave me with?’ chided the other mortician.

Tears were flowing aplenty, some were wailing cursing the heavens for taking their son, sibling and friend. It had been unexpected. The cruelty of death had struck again. An accident along the highway had cut short his breathe. He didn’t feel a thing. He was hardly three decades old; whoever said life begins at forty had missed a point. No, life begins the day you decide to live it. Many felt he hadn’t begun his.

His life had unfulfillment written all over the faces of his circles, so much that they couldn’t bear his loss. The mother had always envisaged the day he would come back home from the law courts following in her footsteps. ‘You won’t have to worry about life after school,’ She had reminded him. ‘I just want you to focus your energies on your career, you hear me son?’ her quizzical eyes staring down at him. He knew little about his father. His mother reiterated that he did all he could for his family and died in the line of service when the Kenyan troops had left to combat civil warfare in Sierra Leonne, those early years of 2000’s. Captured, tortured and killed, he would never see his Father again. The only memory left was the crown that his mother never replaced in that dining room, and his full combat regalia that was curated in one of the edges in her bedroom.

The friends he kept would also bemoan his inability to share in their excitement. They always felt like he was too uptight, unable to cope with the expectations of the fast-moving world. Preferring to spend time alone while they went out and banged all the beautiful girls in the village. He was branded a misfit for being different. The siblings could not read his mind; he would even taunt them that trying to read his mind was a recipe for going bonkers. They had almost given up on him being anything half his potential.

Abel had never overtly expressed any discordance with her mother’s desires, but whenever he sat in that law school chasing admission into the bar, juggling with all those jargons, a cloud of emptiness would engulf him. There was little inspiration if any. Yes, he aced all his papers and it was a matter of when not if he would join the profession and adorn those wigs and robes, while helping mankind seek justice.  

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And so today he watched them as they gathered in his honour. He wished it were for a different reason. A graduation maybe.. not this forsaken burial . We all dread death in this our African society. Speak about death and we quickly brand you as possessed with the evil spirit of death that requires cleansing.

He couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Oh poor souls, they are here for themselves more than they are for me,’ he thought. ‘Oh big brother, you look awful in a suit, you didn’t have to.’ The entire village was in tears. Even the neighbour who had refused to talk to him for over a decade after he, an innocent toddler, had allegedly let pigs from their stable to devour his plantation, was wailing as if he had lost his greatest possession. (as if he, a renowned farmer, didn’t know the untold mischief of pigs; especially when hungry.)

He couldn’t wait for the eulogies; ‘who would go first?’ he wondered. At least there was no politician to ramp and rile up the masses to their favour ahead of the elections a few months away. They were all crying all right, not for the loss of the person that he was, but for the person that he would have been-the person they wanted him to be. There was a hidden disappointment in their faces.

His girlfriend was offering perhaps the slightest glimmer of hope in humanity (and you still don’t understand why all the wise men tell you to choose yourself a woman you can live with and not what the society wants for you. )

She would momentarily get lost in thought and smile ever so curtly. She must have been remembering the day they spent in the police cells after being caught as teenagers making out in an abandoned garage. ‘But what have we done?’ She had played innocent. There were just so many memories to run a reverie. She even remembered the first time she visited him in his then single room. His neighbours, perhaps in an act of protecting their ‘territory’ had tried to harrass her out of their shared bathroom. But Abel had showed up as the proverbial thief (god) , and put them to their place; telling them to respect ‘his rib’ lest they lost their grocery business. Abel was the ideal definition of a gentleman man to her.

His uncle was comforting his mum, no tears, at least he was straight faced. He had to be, for his sister. He mumbled something to her, ‘Abel was my best friend, heavens know I loved him.’

Abel felt like he could turn in the casket. After all the run-ins, the high-handedness that was his uncle, castigating all his decisions and an apparent dislike for his personality; he claims that he was the best friend? How far can the lying tongue of humans go.

They went and on; the colleague they hardly shared a word who was now professing how much of an influence he had been in his career; when he only knew he was a cog in the wheel at the workplace.

Martin, the foreman who fleeced him during the construction of his new home in Lusingeti, a couple of kilometres from their home in Mudete, was singing praises of just how good they were to each other. His next door neighbour raved about how they shared their rentals and maintained an open door policy…. he couldn’t remember the last time they had a sustained conversation beyond pleasantries.

He couldn’t, take it anymore; ‘Dear mama, I am sorry, I never made you proud of me, I didn’t live the life you chose for me. I tried for a whole twenty plus years. Two decades and some change, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t love the best thing in law school…. Being referred to as your Lordship never rocked up my boat. I tried.

To my siblings, you never knew me because it wasn’t worth it. What use would it be knowing that I never wanted riches for me… that I had a heart you all despised. That I wasn’t after making our surname proud at least not in an ownership or amassing wealth kind of sense. All the material and things you wanted us to fight over never impressed me for a moment.

To all my friends and real ones, I lived the best I could… I enjoyed each moment. I might not have been as cool as you, but I managed to live my full life and I hope you all do. Ciao.”

Abel’s spirit vanished to the heavens as he left a congregation ‘mourning’ whatever was left in flesh.

……what if the dead could talk.