An Auntys Exit Aunty Felicia was my mother’s eldest sister. I was her lovely nephew. She was married to a London trained laboratory technician and had children who became lawyers and engineers. My mother lost her mother at a young age and all Aunty Felicia has been doing was to fill the gap, the gap of a mother. She has been retired for some years and has actually become a little tired until a certain pond of sickness came to drown her body. Aunty Felicia lived in Enugu. I have not been to Enugu since I had grown to have common sense. The last time I was with her, she told me there was a time my mother brought me to Enugu as a baby and left me in her house to go to IMT and then I crawled to drink kerosene kept in a cup in the kitchen. She caught me drinking this kerosene, stopped me, and then drove me to hospital. That was how she had saved me from whatever that may come. My mother reminds me of this in many ways. So, I developed some hatred for kerosene. Petrol and gas were better. If it was the season of Christmas, Aunty Felicia was the one whose gifts were greater. Aunty Felicia was the aunty who comes from Enugu to visit my parents each year. We know her for bringing okpa and Tampico and plantain chips and clothes. She knows the things her sister’s children would want. When my WAEC results were released and were excellent, she sent apples to me, my mother brought them home. Felicia gave you, she said. I coughed out a sugary smile. Aunty Felicia was the one who told me to use cotton wools in my ear when I was going to fly for the first time. Cotton wools would prevent the aero plane noise. It happens to some people on their first time of flying. She has followed every bit of success from her sister’s children. She loved discussions that matter. She loved newspapers and neatness. She was organized, feared little mistakes, was afraid to drive her car and didn’t have a lot of worries within herself. She was a woman whose life was shaped by love. Her beauty was in the middle. Her nose stood like the nose of a damsel. She cared too much about the body cream she used and the clothes she wore. Her skin had the color of carton and her sunken eyes glistened in any dim light that comes across. Aunty Felicia had that kind of thick lips that releases the best smile a human being could release. How a smile creeps out of her face was a miraculous thing. If smiles were pain killers, a bucket of her smiles alone could keep her alive. It was her smile that consoles my mother still. It was that same smile that I wish other women could have. A smile as expensive as Aunty Felicia’s smile could not be found in any market. Aunty Felicia’s life was like the awesomeness of a hibiscus flower. The hibiscus was her peace and the flower was her love. I f the world could request for a hibiscus, Aunty Felicia was one. If the earth needed a flower, she could represent. My mother still has tears in her eyes. She has been muttering under her breath for a while. Her hands trembled as she drove back home from work on the day Aunty Felicia died. It was on a Thursday, and I was home the day she left. My mother has been calling since we heard she was admitted in a hospital. Her daughter stayed with her and each time my mother called, she complained of one thing or another; that Aunty Felicia’s blood wasn’t flowing again; that her whole body has been soaked in weakness; that there was fluid in her lungs; and then that she was dead. But two days before Aunty Felicia was gone, my mother called and all her daughter said was that she was responding to treatment. She had started to eat, she said. A slight happiness poured upon our minds. This one won’t do her any harm. Her last sickness before this frightened us and we all thought it would capture her, but it didn’t. She ran away from it. This one had come so swift. Aunty Felicia dies and all my mind can imagine is seeing her come back again. -chimee
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 16:12:10 +0000
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