AND I LOST MY SOULMATE…

Tony Eluemunor pays a heart-rending tribute to his wife, Ngozi, who passed at age 50

I’ll never for­get October 8, 2022. Yes, it was my birthday, but a terrible one. It was the only birthday on which my wife, Marian Ngozi (I called her Soulmate and so did my friends), a UNIBEN-trained lawyer, never wished me a “Hap­py Birthday, Mr. T”. That accursed Saturday, she was battling against death right inside the Garki Hospi­tal. And she lost that battle.

Was it her sixth or seventh hos­pitalization since April this year? Sincerely, I have lost count. What I can’t forget is that she endured two surgeries in two months. Her soul returned to God that night of October 8; at 9:15 pm. She had turned 50 years old on September 24, barely two weeks before she passed on.

Ah, how does a man write about the death of a wife? It is easy to re­count the battles with the demons of heartache, the devils of uncertainty and the archfiends of fear that grips the heart as you surrender all initiatives to the doctors. Those are the easy paths really; recounting the throes that tore the heart into shreds as an illness progressed, rav­aging the body and mind of a loved one and as hope would begin to fade, is the hard road to travel.

How hard has Soulmate’s passing been on me? I must confess that in the afternoon of Thursday October 13, when I ended a phone conversation with a Form Master of my son’s class at Christ the King College (CKC) Gwagwalada, I said aloud: “Let me tell Soulmate about this conversation.” Only the ohhs and ahhs of the people who had gathered for condolence visit brought me back to reality. And that same af­ternoon, I visited the Garki Hospital Mortuary to see her remains while it was possible. Ah, the face was serene. She was free from her agonies.

At times like this, your columnist finds solace in music. Greek singer, Nana Mouskouri, says (in THERE’S A TIME) “for love to grow, and to end in lonely tears. There’s a (face) I adore that I’ll see no more though I live for a hundred years. There’s a time for losing all you want and for travelling on, but the hurt in my heart, it goes on from day to day, will not go away, keeps on longing for what’s gone. And the hurt in my heart knows you are never coming home till the sea runs dry. In my dreams you have left yourself behind, you caress my mind when the nights grow dark and chill. Where’s the magic wand that will bring you nearer home?”

That magic wand doesn’t exist! And that’s my tragedy.

And the song’s conclusion? “But the hurt in my heart, it goes on from day to day, never goes away, for it is all I have left of you.”

2022 will remain an “annus horri­bilis” (horrible year) to me. Since our marriage began it’s the only year we never danced to Shania Twain’s “You Are Still The One”, on July 1st, our wed­ding anniversary. We could not dance to the song this year because she was on the hospital bed, preparing for a second surgery in as many months. That particular hospitalization lasted from June 26 to July 27 and Soulmate was on oxygen support for three weeks and was fed intravenously for two weeks. Sometimes four tubes were sticking into her body at the same time. Once, she couldn’t sleep for 48 hours.

 Shania Twain’s song which we turned into our anniversary hymn says: “Looks like we made it, look how far we’ve come, my baby. We are still together, still going strong. You are still the one that I belong to, the one I want for life, the one I kiss good night”. But all that is past and gone now. And that is sad.

Now. Dear, dear Soulmate, the reality that has hit me is from Fatback band’s 1980s hit record, “To Be Without Your Love, what a tender love, is like to find the sun is gone; to be without your love, what a tender love, is like to know the day would never dawn. To be without your love…is like to hold the rose but only feel the torns” and “how can I be strong when half of me was you?” I have the rest of my life to find an answer to that question.

Soulmate was not guileful…as in cunning or foxy or slick or sly, or tricky. She was truly guileless. She just didn’t know how to begin to be deceptive. And “sorry”, “please” and “thank you” were ever ready to drop from her lips. Oh, she was ever hum­ble, yet steadfast in her beliefs and stands and stances. Above all, she was peaceable and peaceful.

All she ever want­ed was to be of service to humanity and to fight as fiercely as possible in her ceaseless bid to save unborn ba­bies from the hands of abortionists and to rehabilitate women who have experienced such. Oh, she was relent­less on that score.

She once stopped a street girl who was pregnant from selling her baby for N300,000 and she reunited that Asaba girl with her sister who was then an Abuja-based UBA staff.  But, again, all of  that is past and gone.

I dread the day her Fulani beggar friend would knock again on our door. She would not be there to engage her in a little understood discussion where smiles and laughter would paper over the gaps in conversation before the beggar friend of her’s would leave loaded with victuals. Yes, she was kind to a fault.

The only truth that matters now is that I miss Soulmate more than words can say. Did that come from a musician? No, it came from the tab­ernacle on the altar of the sanctuary of the chapel of the cathedral of my heart. And it hurts!

Eluemunor is a Journalist