Didi.

This is a post about grief, about two happy girls, and about death.

I cooked spaghetti today. I haven't cooked in over two months, but I decided to satisfy a craving from 2 weeks ago today. Throughout the time I cooked, while I chopped purple onions into uneven bits, pounded pepper and stirred the spag, I thought of you at different stages of your life. I realized after cooking that I had thought of you for almost an hour, while simultaneously doing other tasks, I realized that I have been thinking of you since the 1st of May, it's like an invisible stamp on my brain that I cannot seem to shake off. I thought to myself, I understand now what people mean when they say “I have thought about you every minute of the day since you died.”

The person I mourn was burnt alive in an accident that every other person escaped, apart from her 4-year-old daughter, her pregnant self, and two other unfortunate people.

Death has forced me to do so many things I wouldn't ordinarily do, like cry ugly loud cries, replay a loop of memory for minutes unend, recreate how you must have died in my head a hundred times, and squeeze things so hard when I realize that truly, you are dead. Writing about you in the past tense is so surreal and unbelievable, and 100% of the time I believe I would be woken up from a bad dream, but it's almost 3 days now, and although I asked a hundred times if they were sure you really died, they said yes.

I cannot remember the first time I met you, but I'm sure my first thought must have been about how pretty you were. You knew how to talk in a way that was sure to make people smile while they listened. You grew up in Onitsha but possessed no sort of fastness that Ontisha people tend to have, you were calm, kind, and not in a phony kind of way, your kindness was innate, the type that only a person who was born to be kind was, and you were a true first daughter.

We are not related by blood, but you became my sister so fast, it seemed like we were. I always smiled inwardly whenever you introduced me as your sister even though we looked nothing alike. You listened, I rarely had much to talk about, but when I did, you listened. You were easy, easy to give, easy to say nice things, and easy to talk to, this was evident in how everyone loved you. Your beauty was not a shield, it was a projector of good.

When you gave birth during Covid, your Mum could not come to be with you till the lockdown was lifted, and so I was tasked with staying with you. I held baby after she was born for more times than I could remember. I watched her while she was in the hospital as a few days old child in the blue light jaundiced children are always kept. I watched her while you caught a few minutes of sleep, I watched her while Mummy came to bathe her, I watched her when she was placed under the morning sun when we came back from the hospital. I was so fascinated by her being. It was she who taught me how to properly carry a child. Before then, I was terrified of little children, but she allowed me to learn, to cradle her head softly, to hold her against myself steadily. The last time I saw her, she was a beautiful 4-year-old, running around the house and playing with her little brother and her Dad, while you cooked the Ogbono soup that they asked me to cook but I had no idea how to. You had all come to visit, and I would never forget her playing around in the house, a cheerful and beautiful child, her Mother's daughter through and true.

I would never see her again. I would never hear her laugh and talk in the accent that I love. I would not watch the both of you grow and become the mother-daughter duo relationship everyone would wish they had.

Didi, now I wish you were not who you are. Selfish I know, but it would allow me to mourn you better. Didi, I cannot think of a time I hated you for something you did, I want to, I really do, but it does not exist, and so I'm doing the one thing that I hope would put me out of this misery, write.

The day after you died, I boarded a bus and a man on the bus prayed. After the prayer, I asked him if God would allow a pregnant woman and her child to burn to death, or if it was the work of the enemy. He couldn't reply for a while, but then he told me it had to be the work of the enemy. I choose to believe that Didi. It will help me still believe that God exists, because I don't think he will permit you to be killed, in such a gory way, maybe the devil sent the letter of death, but somehow, the letter got to God late and he did not sign off your death. The preacher said it was the enemy, and I believe him, I want to, but who will be an enemy to someone like yourself?