She looked like a mad woman standing by the Accident and Emergency entrance of the hospital with her two hands on her head.
“Why would the gateman allow a mad woman into the hospital premises in the first place?” I said to my brother as we drove into the hospital parking lot that morning.
We walked into the hospital through the main entrance and straight to the Intensive Care Unit on the second floor where our mother was admitted. We were welcomed by roasted/rotten meat smell as we approached the ICU. There were two new patients bandaged from head to toe, you could only see what looked like a mouth and two eyes. They were burnt beyond recognition.
Story had it that they were traveling in an 18 seater bus from Portharcourt to Aba. They were already somewhere in Abia state when the vehicle’s back tyre bursted. Unknown to them, a passenger amongst them had a bag of gun powder in the boot. The gun powder responded to the tyre burst, exploded and burnt everything in the bus.
Seven out of the 18 pasengers were rescued alive even though they were burnt beyond recognition. Five of the rescued seven died at the hospitaĺ in Abia, the two remaining survivors were hurriedly rushed to the specialist hospital in Enugu.
Not long after we got to the ICU to see our mother, the mad looking woman by the accident and emergency entrance down stairs was by the ICU windows pacing up and down with her hands still on her head. I panicked! I had to ask the nurses who the woman outside the window could be looking for?
Deep sigh! “Her son is one of the two survivors of the fire accident”, they told me. I was speechless but that wasn’t the bad news. Her two sons were involved in the accident, her other son died in the fire in Abia, while the one in the ICU was still battling to stay alive. They are men in their 30’s.
I didn’t know when I stepped out of that ICU to go give the woman a hug. As I approached her with arms wide open, she hugged me tightly with tears running down our faces. That’s a mother at the verge of losing her sanity, if she hadn’t lost it yet. She already lost a son three days ago and she was at the hospital watching her other son fight to live. She was alone except for her teenage son who accompanied her and he also looked lost. Her husband is no more. The woman is a mother in her late 50’s or early 60’s.
I didn’t know what to say to her, so I asked her the last time she had something to eat and she sighed, and muttered incoherent stuff. I took her by hand and led her to the restaurant downstairs. She barely ate a quarter of the food she was served. When she was done, I asked if she would like to take a bathe. She told me she has not taken a bathe in three days. I arranged hot water with the help of the nurses, and she took a bath. She repacked her hair and got her a change of clothing. Most of the time, she was lost in thought and aloof and oblivious of happenings around her.
The first time I came close to losing anyone in my immediate family was when my mother had a ghastly accident in 2017. As she was in coma and on life support machine for months battling to live again, I was lost. It was like my whole world was on stand still. I became a shadow of myself, lost my glow and was barely recognisable. Even when I smile or laugh, it was from a place of pain. I took to food for comfort, gained a lot of weight and was literally losing my mind. I was afraid and my heart felt like a heart attack was waiting to happen. I strayed into the road countless times and was jolted back to reality by car honk or people yelling at me.
I cannot imagine the trauma that comes with actually losing a loved one, talk more of a mother losing a child and two at the same time. To me and everyone else she looked every inch a mad woman, but only a mother knows the pain she was going through at that particular time. And no, her second son she brought to Enugu didn’t make it, he died a few days later.
You may have lost a loved one to the cold hands of death, no one understands exactly what you are going through or how you feel. You may even have questioned the existence of God, your faith in him. All I can tell you is that your emotions are valid.
Cry as much if you feel like it. Do not bottle up any emotions. Tears/crying is not a sign of weakness, it is therapeutic. Talk to someone if you feel the need to, the pain you feel is real. You will heal eventually. The pain will fizzle, though you may never forget.
While we sympathize with those who are grieving, we all should have it behind our minds as well that life will sometimes throw us curve balls at some point. While we hope and pray for the best, we should also be prepared for the worst, though no man is ever fully prepared for the traumatic feeling that comes with such tragedies. Those we love including ourselves will not live forever, death will happen either now or later, we only pray for the fortitude to bear such loss.
Be nice to the people you meet, many are traumatised even to the point of insanity. Just a hug or a listening ear is all they need to be reminded that they are not alone.