Death on Christmas Day

Christmas is a joyous occasion. When the phone rings you anticipate far-flung family and friends calling to wish you a Merry Christmas. You do not expect to be told that a relative has met death.

Unfortunately, that was Christmas 2019 for us. I had travelled to my sister’s place where our mother has been staying these past few months, only to find out she had received a call from her sisters in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast, not to wish Merry Christmas, but to inform her that her nephew, our cousin, was dead.

How?! But wasn’t he in his early thirties? No, but certainly he couldn’t be older than 35! What happened? Accident? Illness? Where? At home? Wow! Today?! Just now on Christmas Day? Oh no!

We don’t know what happened. He had not felt well for about 24 hours. He did not go to Christmas Mass that day, but felt strong enough to go to a neighbour’s place later in the day to help with a small job. Only to have seizure-like activity while by-standers watched. Someone rushed home to get his mom, but by the time they got him into a taxi and to the hospital, he was gone. Cause of death? Unknown. And that is Christmas 2019 for my family.

I started to reflect on death, mourning, and funerals. He was the first child of my aunt. He was not a sickly man. He had survived childhood. He had behaved well. So why had he not been given a long life? No this was not a natural death. Would people evoke evil spirits? I know premature death is considered an unnatural death. And unnatural deaths are not to be encouraged. So burial is expedited. Funeral rites are perfunctionary. Mourning is limited.

So here my aunt is, in a state of shock at the death of her first born, on Christmas Day nonetheless, being visited by family and friends and encouraged to feast not weep. For weep and your remaining children will follow into death and woe is the mother who buries all her children.

Everyone dies. True. My parents like to say “all die be die”. They must have heard that phrase somewhere long time ago in Ghanaian popular culture. But we ask for a good death. At least I do. For the Nzema, death is not the end. It’s a transition of the soul from the physical world to the spiritual world of the ancestors.

My paternal grandmother recently died. Halloween 2019. SHE had lived. Ninety-five years old. Survived by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And while such an achievement calls for a prolonged mourning and an elaborate funeral, for the success of a funeral is assessed on the basis of how excessive the expenditures are and by how many important people come to honour the deceased, per her wishes she was buried quickly, and by that I mean Thanksgiving 2019. May her gentle soul rest in perfect peace.

Funerals are for the living. To celebrate the life of the dead. But when it’s a bad death, an unnatural death, it’s hard to celebrate that kind of passing.

Rest Well Christian.