🗣️ Gist📍 Street Gist
My Father Took a Second Wife Without Telling Us. The Burial Almost Did Not Happen.
S
Spiral Hornbill from Yola
4 months ago
Back in 2022, my father passed away in Kaduna. We were preparing for his burial when a woman we had never seen before showed up with three children. She said she was his wife. They had been married for 12 years in a village 80 kilometers away. My mother collapsed on the spot. I was 34 then, the first son. I had to handle everything. The woman brought a marriage certificate from a local court and pictures of my father at naming ceremonies for children I did not know existed. My younger siblings were crying. My uncles were shouting. Everyone wanted to send her away. But I looked at those children. The oldest was 11, the youngest was 5. They had lost their father too. I told my uncles we would bury him together or we would not bury him at all. It took three days of meetings with elders before my mother agreed to let the second wife and her children sit at the funeral. On the burial day, both wives sat on opposite sides of the church. Nobody spoke to each other. But the children from both sides played together after the grave was closed. That was the only good thing that came out of that day. What I learned is that our fathers lived lives we will never fully know. And forgiveness is not always about forgetting. Sometimes it is just about letting the dead rest in peace.
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