At exactly 4 am, the rooster crowed for the first time, as it usually does every morning of my life, and this was exactly what broke me, not the burial.
It was Sunday morning, and we had buried my grandmother the Saturday before, in the place her husband built, and she was buried right beside her husband, just as they both wanted according to what my dad said.
A lot of relatives were still around that morning, and one of the reasons why the compound was filled with people even though some had gone so early to be all the traffic was that some people were outside trying to make sure the environment was kept clean, while some were busy making preparations for what people would eat that morning.
My aunty's voice was giving some instructions that nobody asked her for. I was already awake and looking at everything from the veranda while also listening to the house breathe around me, waiting for something to feel different.
Then the rooster crowed again, and at that moment, I got to realize that the world had not been told my grandmother died.
That morning, my mother and other housewives were already downstairs stirring a lot of ewedu soup enough to feed quite a large number of people till the next street because in our tradition, a day after, we cook heavy for people to eat, visitors who might come around, and for neighbors too.
I was already feeling lively because I could already see the environment clearly without the help of artificial lighting. So I went out with my sister to get something next door. Entering the gate, I met an aged woman. I'm not sure if I have seen her before.
She held out my grandmother's walking stick, the one with the wooden handle, and metallic rod, which has another three external supports for touching the ground and safely passed it into my hand and said, "Íwo ló Kan bayi" it is you that is left now.
I was still a very small boy when this happened, and I did not feel like a man that had been left with anything because I said I had my father. But at the same time, my grandmother was the last one standing out of my grandparents, and I am the first male grandson. I believe that was the significance of her handing the walking stick to me.
I had to collect it anyway not to feel like I was disrespectful to an elderly woman. I stood there, holding it while the aroma of the food they were preparing entered my nose, coupled with the smoke from the fire wood.
No one asked what the rod was for, if I understood the significance. I believe they thought I was still young, some noodles, satisfied, as if a transfer had been completed.
I am older now and still sometimes see the rod where I kept it, even though I have not for once used it to walk anyhow. And it just reminded me of my grandmother and how the hardest part of looks was never the goodbye. It was the random memories that came anyway, and that even right before I finished grieving who I used to be, I had become someone new.
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