Death struck twice this week.
First a friend I went to elementary, middle, and high school with. Played football together even. Shot himself Thursday.
Second my dad’s mother, today, 2pm Nigerian time.
There’s a high price of coming to America, and the creditor came-a-callin this week, and he asked for his due.
My dad came to the US in 1979, a bit after receiving his master’s degree, to study for his Ph.D in Petroleum Engineering, first at PSU, then finally at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
That decision would forever change a generation of Adewumis.
My mother came in tow, a year later after getting all the immigration stuff cleared, with my oldest brother and sister. I wasn’t yet born.
That happened several years later, after two more had been born, in State College, Pennsylvania, although my house is in Lemont.
I’ve always had my family: my dad, mom, brothers and sisters that is. The only other relatives we have this side of the Atlantic is a mother’s cousin in Baltimore, and my mother’s sister in Chicago.
I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have odes of family to gather with at holidays, but I was grateful just to have the 7 or 8 of us there are here (and we’ve grown through marriages and children).
People would always ask “how often do you go back to Nigeria?”
Once.
In 6th grade, we mustered some cash (with a family of seven, flying during high season, each plane ticket is about $2k … do the math) and visited family for three weeks in South Western Nigeria.
Family I’d never known, some who spoke a language that is a bit native to my ear, but mostly foreign to my tongue.
Both my parents’ fathers had passed away, one over thirty years back, the other when I was four.
I never knew them.
I did meet both of my parents’ mothers, and it was a joy to meet in flesh and blood people you only know from stories, seemingly carved out of myth and legend.
My dad particularly would tell stories about his mother — how great a storyteller she was, and how every night when he was young, the family would crowd around as her words cast a spell over them and took them through time past, present and yet to come.
I’ve discussed before that I’m from everywhere and from nowhere — not truly from Nigeria being born and raised in America, but not truly from America with a heritage still strong and true running hundreds of years before this country’s birth.
I was supposed to go back to Nigeria last May. I secured my Nigerian passport, after a hassle, but had already missed my flight and as reliable as booking companies are, they bungled the chance for me to go in June as well.
I had always told my dad I wanted to go back before my grandmother’s passed away. Well now it’s too late to see one of them.
I firmly believe in God, despite the trials and tribulations we go through — and I’ve had a few over the past few years — but at times it seems a laugh in the face to have missed a chance to see the woman who brought my father into this world for only the second time ever.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, our second meeting will be in Heaven.
I don’t feel sorry for myself at all; quite the contrary I feel delighted to even know who my family is, where we come from, and to have a fair relationship with my parents and brothers and sisters.
After reading a wonderful memoir titled “Three Little Words,” by Ashley Rhodes-Courter, I know that here, even in America, hundreds of thousands are orphaned or even taken away (or abandoned) from their birth parents.
One of my best friends’ dad died when he was little. And another good friend’s dad passed when he was but a bit older — old enough to remember him, but not quite aged to be able to remember their experiences but more than fondly.
There’s a high price to coming to America, and the creditor came-a-callin this week, and he asked for his due.
My dad’s mother was in the hospital for the past several months. She called him not ten days ago to plead with him to return to Nigeria to see her. He asked for more time — busy with school you see and a long and far trip at that to return.
Even for him who goes to Nigeria for work five times a year, the earliest he would be free was June.
You can’t turn the wheel of time back, and now she’s gone.
There’s a high price of coming to America, and the creditor came-a-callin this week, and he asked for his due.
Whatever the riches and wealth in this country, with glory untold; where commoners eat, drink, and sleep like kings and queens of ancient times; where the lowliest can rise and dare to rule; where the heart yearns for the life with work left wanting — there’s a sacrifice we’ve all paid.
We’ve laid our families, for better or for worse, at the altar of dreams come true and success with sometimes nary a thought on what life could be, on how life SHOULD be lived.
I have no doubt my father has done what had to be done — and in fact has changed a generation because of it, and maybe one day two countries — even the world.
He provided for the education of countless cousins, nieces and nephews, and in fact was the one paying for the care of his mother — and will be handling the costs of her funeral — but yet, at the end of the day, is it really worth it?
I believe some truths, some rewards demand a high price to pay, and I strongly believe that my father has laid down his family at times, not at the altar of success, but with the knowledge in his heart, that the price he has sowed will reap times again and more.
There’s a high price of coming to America, and the creditor came-a-callin this week, and he asked for his due.
And we told him, fine, take what’s due, but there’s one thing abundant in a Nigerian, that at the end of life, there is not only death, a funeral, and sorrows untold. There is feasting and celebration, as the old pass into the sleep that from which none awake, one constant continues, one truth to hold on to dearly and share with the family that still breaths …
Joy.
