42 years ago, my mother walked out on my father with his best friend. The day she packed her things and walked out of our house, my father said, “You will not walk far, you won’t walk long.
” This weekend I oversaw my mother’s funeral.
She had been crippled for 41 years. When the constant quarrels started I was about 15 years old.
My father’s work took him away a lot and I thought Uncle Ofei was just being helpful to me and my mother in my father’s absence. It wasn’t until the quarrels came to head, and my mother packed her things into uncle Ofei’s waiting car did I understand the man I called uncle had been lurking around to steal my mother.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, my mother had an affair my father’s best friend, who was an ‘uncle’ to me, while my father on the road, working to make a life for us. She eventually left us for him and on the day she walked out, my father cursed her; “You will not walk far, you won’t walk long.
” My grandmother moved in with my father and I to help raise me.
I hardly ever saw my mother. Barely a year after they rode into the sunset, my mother had a car accident, the story is that everyone in the bus came away unscathed, my mother broke both her legs in the knee joints.
She underwent surgery in both legs and spent months at the hospital. While at the hospital, her lover, Uncle Ofei was her primary companion, and the story goes that he caught pneumonia from the hospital, suffered complications and passed away while my mother was still on admission at the hospital.
My mother was released from the hospital in September 1982, I remember because it was a day before my birthday and my father had permitted me to go with my aunt to take her home. She never walked again, up to this past weekend when we put her in a casket.
It was both sad and funny at the funeral, because as far as my maternal family is concerned my father is a grand wizard. He cursed their princess with his dark powers.
My aunt’s dirge at the funeral was, “Kwame Oware Wassani bayifuo eeei, enam no na ɛda hɔ no o bɛfa kɔwe. Iiiihihihihihihi (blows her nose)“ (Translates: Kwame Oware wizard of Wassa tribe, there is meat in the coffin come eat.
) Kwame Oware is my father’s name. When my paternal aunts who accompanied me to the funeral had had enough, they started their own insinuations by indirectly calling my late mother an adulterer while pretending to cry: “Maame Oye ɔbaapa!
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page. Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
