TELL ME ABOUT PAIN WHEN YOU FEEL IT
I have a reproach for hospitals. The nauseating feel that comes with it is enough to make me sick. Hospitals have become a metonym of many things unpleasant. I have also had several ordeals with hospitals and with every experience, I have become more petrified of hospitals. It is like standing in the corridor between life and death. You feel the closeness to what both feel like.
I remember being admitted to Queen’s hospital when I was 15. A man had come with his wife who was heavily in labour. His hopeful panic was too obvious. He wanted her out of that pain and he was too excited to know he was to become a father. One could guess that it was his first experience. It never crossed his mind that the next page of his life would be filled with so much grief.
As the lady laboured to deliver her child, every push proved harder than the next, her screams grew louder and then faintly. In between these hours of labour, the doctor had recommended an emergency caesarean operation. Suddenly, the excitement of the man had gone. His wife was battling for life and that of his child. I wondered if the man could save one, who would it be? The next morning, I woke to the sadness which rented the air. I had no idea what had happened but the man looked so lost, so deprived, so empty. I saw him carry his child home in the company of another woman who looked different from the lady he had brought in last night. He had lost his wife and now left with a child who would not experience her biological mother. How would he continue this new script which life had handed him rudely?
LIFE BREAKS US IN MANY WAYS
I had seen the announcement on my class WhatsApp group informing us that Harriet was to undergo an operation for breast cancer. It came as a shock for me because I had no idea that she had cancer or that she had been sick. We were relatively close for one with whom I had been in a relationship. At that moment, my fears triggered memories of her, of us. She was one with so much energy and beauty. She had quite the figure and well favoured with boobs. I remember the first time we made out as young secondary school graduates. She would refuse me fondling her breast with the reckless vigour of a lad who was fulfilling his fantasy. She would say, “gently Martins. I want my breast standing ooo” it became a joke we shared every time we bumped into each other in the University. When she won Miss Fresher in her 100 level, like hands in glove, I teased her with silly remarks “You owe me for preserving those boobs” she had a matchless charm for raunchy jokes and I loved it. If anyone had started the fire of romance in me, it was Harriet. She taught me that romance was as rhythmic as an orchestra; Every move creates a tempo, the tempo creates a feel. She was attentive. If she knew you liked the sensation she gave while scribbling her fingers on your back, she would dwell on it a little more. If she knew your nipples were as sensitive as her’s, she would fondle it with some intention and even nip it with her mouth and all that stuff. With romance, she was an Aphrodisiac.
We had strayed far from each other after she got into another relationship but we somehow maintained a relative closeness. I was not part of her life but I knew it all.
How could she be sick? For how long? Cancer? Operation? I could not make sense of it all.
I remember my class planning a visit to her before the operation and I really could not bring myself to seeing her in that state. She hated vulnerability, she hated being pitied. I knew this and it was the only narrative I knew of her. One time while we were in secondary school, the entire class was going to be flogged by Mr Ogbonnaya who everyone feared. While we all packed behind the class fighting against our turn to be flogged, Harriet was the most courageous. She walked to him, lifted her hands in readiness to be caned. That was Harriet in her true form.
I never had the courage to apologize for not visiting nor calling while she was at the hospital. It was not pride nor hate nor some defined feelings. I just never had that courage. Every time I tried, I failed and with each time I got used to not trying so I let it be. Harriet had a successful operation and that was what mattered. I never doubted her though. She was a warrior. If anybody could cheat death, it was her. She did pay a price for this though. She had lost her boobs in exchange for her survival. Life’s bargain is usually the most unfair, the rudeness with which it deals. Deciding what you can have and what you cannot have. Often denying the one thing you would rather not trade. This is perhaps why life is filled with so much unhappiness and accompanied hate. No one is spared in life’s unfair deal. The courageous only find peace in whatever is left. I had no idea how she embraced this reality even though she had no choice. Life is rude when it wants to be.
She had gradually become too quiet and barely involved herself in anything. I saw her fall deep into whatever she was going through. It concerned me but I had no idea how to talk to her about it. I figured she could do this on her own or she was going to get better if not sooner then later.
2020 was a tough year for me. I lost too many human relationships that I started becoming too cautious with the few I had. I was not in the mood to lose another. Not to death nor to my undoing. Sometime in May of 2020, my class had announced that Harriet had relapsed and her condition was deteriorating. The cancer had somehow resurfaced. The news hit me differently. In shatters and splitters. I could not get my mind off it. I felt brutalized by how far apart we had become and how so left out I was with her life even at the darkest moment of her life. I knew I wanted to talk to her about it all but again, I never figured what words to say.
she was scheduled for another operation in July. The family had opened a gofund me account to raise whatever they could for the operation. I showed up at the hospital on the 30th day of June. I had not seen Harriet in years. It was difficult seeing her in that state; pale and gone. She managed to squeeze a smile when she saw me. She had not lost the beauty of her smile. Still a statement as always. She managed to joke about her boobs. I had no idea what to say. Do I apologize for my years of insignificance or just play along with the joke? I muttered the words “I am sorry, Harriet” she gave a heavy sigh in reply and then smiled and said “it is fine, Martins. I also couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for a long time so I understand why you never visited.” I mumbled out words of apology and remained ceaseless at it as though I did not want her to make any more sarcastic remark. “I know how you feel, Harriet.” She replied “Don’t do that Martins, you have no idea what I feel nor what I have felt. Not emotionally, not physically, not psychologically” I was silent as she reminded me of how much hurt my silence caused her, how she expected better from me, how my attempt to connect to her pain was me trying to reduce the burden of her feeling because I wanted to make myself feel better. I felt foolish. I did not know much about cancer and its effect. She was the first patient of cancer I had known. In that moment, my disappointment became the cloud over my head. She looked at me and said, “tell me about pain when you feel it”. I had anticipated that I would badly manage the situation. I gave her the flowers I had gotten with a written note and walked out of the hospital.
On the 12th of July, I saw the announcement on my class WhatsApp group. She did not make it to the second operation. Harriet had passed on. I had no idea if she ever read the note I wrote her nor if she forgave my indiscretion. As eulogies reeled off in honour of Harriet, my heart ached more. For someone who commanded happiness and contagiously smiled for the most years of her life, her last moments were filled with pain even she could not describe. Now, she is gone and for those of us who shared a fondness with her, her memory will be torture for us — something only us understood. Pain is as subjective as our skin. Its experience is unique to its victim. Words are only consoling because we don’t want to feel alone so we try to accommodate some empathy but the truth is grief is a language only known by its victim.
