An angel walked here

This column today is dedicated to the memory

of my late wife OLUWATOMIISIN POPOOLA

(17/12/54 -12/09/20) who went to be with

the Lord on Saturday 12th September, 2020.

Our church’s fasting and prayer session for the first three days of the month in September 2020 had as theme, GOD OF ALL COMFORT (2Corinthians 1:3-4). Nobody then knew that it was the Holy Spirit’s way of preparing us for what would shortly happen thereafter.

On Saturday 5th September, we left Ado-Ekiti for Ibadan for a surprise birthday visit. She glowed so brightly and danced so boisterously that evening that nobody would have guessed it would be her last dance. We were billed to return to Ado-Ekiti the following morning.

That was never to be. What started as body weakness that morning progressed to anorexia, then diarrhea and later, a full-blown crisis. Then began the hospital odyssey and the intensification of the pain. It all looked like a horror movie as it progressed to a gut-wrenching denouement. I prayed so hard for the ‘deus ex machina’ factor when it was getting so bad. She was battling so much yet characteristically fighting so hard.

Exactly one week after it all began, she went to place her sword at the feet of the Master in exchange for a well-deserved rest and crown. I recall it as if it happened only yesterday. But it is a whole year gone!

She veiled pain with a smile. Work was her veneer for aches, prayer her substitute for a sigh. Whenever in pain, she would pick up her phone and start typing prayers to send to everyone on her contact list. Some she would personally call and give a word to encourage or to admonish – all in the love of the Holy Spirit. No one knew that she herself needed those prayers in those times more than the people she was sending them to!

Her countenance hardly betrayed her experience. She never let a crisis steal her communion with her Maker.

Never one to betray fear – I think fear was afraid of her! – even at the peak of a crisis, her demeanour was reassuring in a way that seemed to ask the devil, “Is this all you can do? Bring it on!”

For all of 65 years, she showed that Sickle Cell Disease could not stop her or anyone else, that anyone can live meaningfully and purposefully.

She bowed out gallantly, etched in the heart of everyone who ever made her acquaintance. Indelible! Just like lines in the palm of a hand!

While writing this, I wept bitterly. Not so much out of grief for Tomi (God has helped me significantly in that area).

I wept out of grief for Nigeria and a health system that is so broken that those who have a responsibility to fix it would rather jet elsewhere to sort out their own health challenges, leaving the rest of us at the receiving end of a system that often dispenses more sickness than it does health!!!

The very week Tomi fell into the crisis, resident doctors were on strike nationwide. So, we had no choice but to rush her to a private hospital where the overwhelmed doctors and staff did what they could within their limited capacity and understanding of the peculiar nature of this particular patient.

When it was obvious that they couldn’t handle her matter, one of them suggested we engage the services of a neurologist. I looked at the young doctor who obviously had no clue what he was talking about. A neurologist for a haematology patient? I insisted that she needed a haematologist first before anyone else. So, I promptly paid for the services of one.

The haematologist was scheduled to come at about 11am. He sauntered in at 6pm! By then, Tomi’s condition had become very bad. Her oxygen saturation level had dropped – and no, it wasn’t COVID-related! He came in without even an apology and proprietarily wrote out a prescription and instructed that she be placed on oxygen and pronto, he was gone!

The following day, resident doctors ‘graciously’ called off their strike and at the instance of the proprietress of the hospital, Tomi was immediately rushed to the Haematology Dept of UCH that had managed her case for the greater part of her adult life. Within twelve hours of arrival in UCH and subsequently the ICU, she gave up the ghost in the wee hours of the 12th of September, 2020.

Paradoxically, it is a year after that and, doctors are on another round of strike with all health workers threatening to join. I shudder to imagine how many lives have been lost to the unending ping-pong that medical workers and government play in an unending orgy of double-sided insensitivity that leaves the ordinary Nigerian a mere pawn in the mindless arena.

I wept because I spent my youth fighting in many struggles and causes to secure a better and greater Nigeria. I would never have thought that in my 60s, this is the sour platter Nigeria would still be serving her citizens.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if the system wasn’t this broken, Tomi might still be here. Perhaps not …

In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “the answer is blowing in the wind”!

At her wake, her closest friend (apart from me) shocked me with a testimony she gave of their last conversation. I had stepped out of the hotel to go and run some errands. According to her, Tomi broke down and started crying, not for sorrow or pain but for joy and gratitude. Gratitude to God for giving her a man like me who showed her love, accepted and took care of her warts, moles and all. She wanted her friend to please thank me on her behalf.

I was dumbfounded and broken. I felt I should have been the one doing what she said Tomi did! As more people talked about how I stood by her and all that, all I could say about that when it was my turn to speak was that I wished that everyone knew that Tomi took care of me more than I did her! She made loving her very easy!

She epitomized SACRIFICE and had no qualms about giving up comfort, convenience and many times, her preferences just to see that we were okay.

Whenever I traveled, she hardly slept. Several times, I called in the middle of the night from half-way around the world and she would be awake, praying for me! Whatever she felt was the will of God, she would literally break an arm and a leg to get done.

If I smiled outside, it was because she gave me peace at home.

If, as people say, I loved and took care of her, it was because she made it so easy to do. She modelled patience in a way that would give Job a run for his money!!!

“TEE-DEE”, thanks for the joy and the sunshine you radiated to all and sundry.

Thanks for showing that women of virtue still exist.

Thanks for modeling righteousness without guile or bile.

Thanks for being a great mother and an awesome companion.

And I thank God for leasing you to earth and to me for the time He did!!!

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