The night before I was to go back to work after a week off, I had this conversation with my 5-year-old daughter, Alexis, as I put her to bed:

Me: Lexi, I’m going back to work tomorrow. I can’t take you to school or  pick you up.

Alexis: No, daddy, you can’t do that!. You have to stay home with us!

Me: If I stay home and don’t work, we can’t buy any food.

Alexis: OK?

Me: I can’t buy you any toys.

Alexis: Oh, you need to go to work. Go to work now! Bye daddy!

I am back home after what has been the most profound and moving experience of my life – the burial of my dad.
I have learnt a lot this last month about faith, strength, friendship, family and the dignity of death. I flew home besot with feelings of guilt, sorrow and fear. Fear because I didn’t know if I could give dad a befitting burial. By God’s grace and with the help of family, friends and wel-wishers, dad got a good send-off.

It took me a few days before I went to see his body. I was very apprehensive. My dad however lay there with this look of dignity and contentment. It was almost like he was happy where he was. I left the room with an uncanny sense of calm.

Navigating through the myriad Agona customs was a test in patience and diplomacy. The high point was negotiating the terms of my mum’s widowship rites and other exotic customs. Those old women drive a hard bargain and it’s amazing how much akpeteshie they can consume. I was lucky to have my uncle with me in all the dealings with the Ebusua, else they would have eaten me alive. Why do we have to make everything so complicated? Why is everything sealed with a bottle of Schnapps?

We transported the body to Nyakrom with the Okyeame (my dad was from the Agona royal lineage). Unbeknownst to me, you cannot transport a body over any river without pouring some libation. So the Okyeame sat by the hearse driver with a bottle of Schnapps and poured some in every river we crossed. I wondered how much ended in his belly.
My brothers and I carried dad into his childhood room and then back into the hearse. It was a very profound experience. Placing him in the coffin was also quite emotional.
A great weight fell off my shoulder after the burial and that night, I slept like I hadn’t in a while.

My dad was ready to go. He died praying that “Let this be the day.” He died in a dignified way and unafraid. He welcomed it. Three months before, he had been dropping hints about a “trip he was about to take!” This far cry from the way the Western society treats death and how hard we cling to life. His death has been a very important lesson.

Visit his memorial.

nana

Many years ago in high school, I had to read and memorize the sonnet below by John Donne. It just seems to fit the circumstances…

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell’st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.