The Lesson Learnt from Dotun Oladipo’s Brave Daughters, By Bamidele Johnson

In front of them, in the pews, men and women considerably older than them came undone in ways the girls themselves were somehow managing to resist. I went mightily close. Some of the sobbing was quiet, the type people try to fold into a handkerchief. Some of it was not quiet at all, the kind that announces itself whether or not you want it.

I hope to grow old. I want to see my kids become real adults, find their own feet, make mistakes, recover from them and perhaps one day, complain that their own children are giving them grey hairs. I want that plainly stated before anything else, as everything that follows might read as a man agreeing to an early exit rather than a man simply being honest about the odds.

I want the decades. I want to become the grandfather who repeats the same stories until nobody bothers correcting him anymore. But wanting a thing and being granted are different things. The last year has made that difference harder to ignore than I would like. I have lost many friends recently to keep thinking that optimism is my natural resting state. Some of these men had better blood pressure than mine, better better habits, better everything that is supposed to count. It did not save them.

There is no formula I know that reliably separates the men who make it to 70 from those who do not. Anyone who says he knows one is selling something. So, I do not assume that old age is an already booked destination. Even if I once did, which I doubt, the last three years have cured me of such an illusion. As such, I treat it as a hope rather than an expectation and I have found that a more honest way to live.

It is exactly why I want something placed on record now, while I am still able to place things on record, rather than leave it for people to guess what my wishes were in the fog of a funeral week. If I do not make old bones, my children are not to be asked to read tributes at my funeral. Not one line, however short, however lovingly written.

This, for me, was settled today rather than re-opened. At Dotun Oladipo’s funeral service, his three daughters took turns to read their tributes to their dad and I found myself watching them with awe. There was a kind of strength in them that I do not possess. It is the strength needed to stand in front of a hall brimming with grieving adults and speak about a man they have just lost. Forever. Strength, however, is not the same as ease. I could see plainly what that strength was costing them as they read. Their voices caught. Their composure held and then did not hold and then held again through sheer will.

In front of them, in the pews, men and women considerably older than them came undone in ways the girls themselves were somehow managing to resist. I went mightily close. Some of the sobbing was quiet, the type people try to fold into a handkerchief. Some of it was not quiet at all, the kind that announces itself whether or not you want it.

Those young women honoured their father with a grace that is beyond me. What they did was astonishing. So, what I am attempting is an observation of a custom I have now watched wound people. This was not the first time I had watched this particular ritual extract more than it should from people already running on fumes. I saw an earlier and harder version of it at a friend’s wake back in 2015.

The first son was called forward to read his father’s tribute and he could not do it. He tried, but the words would not come and he stood there in front of a crowd of mourners, with his grief simply refusing to organise itself into sentences. The officiating minister, rather than releasing him from the task, urged him to continue. I sat fizzing with sorrow and ire. He could not go on and, eventually, the minister accepted, but not before insisting a while longer than it should have reasonably taken. His younger brother was called up next, presumably on the theory that if one grieving son could not manage it, maybe another one could. He flunked it in exactly the same way. Grief does not distribute itself more conveniently among siblings just because a programme has been printed and needs to be followed.

I have turned that memory over many times since, trying to work out why this part of the rites is treated as mandatory in the first place. I have not found a satisfying answer. Maybe it comes from a belief that a child’s words carry more weight than anyone else’s, which may even be true, but weight is exactly the problem when those carrying it are struggling to hold themselves together with nothing but adrenaline and the fear of dissolving in public. Maybe it is simply inertia, the reason we still do a hundred things at funerals that nobody can explain the original purpose of. Either way, I have stopped looking for the justification. I no longer think one exists that is good enough to weigh against what I watched happen to that boy in 2015.

So, let this stand as my instruction rather than my preference, the kind of thing I would rather state plainly now than leave for my children to infer later from how uncertain I sound when the subject comes up in passing. If I do not get the old age I am hoping for, my children will not be asked to read a single word over my body. Someone else can speak for me. A friend, a stranger with a steadier voice and a smaller stake in the loss, anyone whose grief will not be quite so total that standing upright becomes almost impossible.

My children, of course, will sit in front and fall apart if that is what the day requires of them, but without the microphone. That, at least, is one small mercy I intend to arrange for them while I am still here to arrange it.

Dotun deserved every bit of the send-off his daughters gave him today and I suspect he would have been the first to tell them to sit down and let someone else carry the weight for a while. He did not get a say in that, as none of us ever do once we are the ones being spoken of rather than the ones speaking. Rest well, Dotun. You raised three young women whose strength I will not soon forget. That alone says everything worth saying about the man you were.

Bamidele Johnson first published this on his Facebook page

NOP NIGERIA