“Meeting your uncle was the sweetest thing that ever happened to me.” As my uncle’s wife, Aunty Adun, concluded her statement, I could only smile and imagine what the story she had just told me would be like, it was obviously a match made by the hosts of heaven.
Like a man captured by the sweet scenes he had just watched in a movie, I really enjoyed the love story my uncle’s wife had just shared with me.
I had just finished my service year in Imo State, Nigeria and was ready to explore what love was going to be like. Not that I had never had the experience but I haven’t been so close to reality.
Like a man who had just come face to face with his greatest fears, I came to the point where I couldn’t but imagine what being married to a complete stranger would look like.
I had tried to get some help from my parents who had been married for a reasonable number of years and I felt since they could go through those years with so much love, I can’t but emulate the same.
“Face your studies and don’t let me hear that you are following girls o!” This had been my dad’s warning right from when I was in school and my mum always backs his statement with a facial expression. Like an obedient child, I never mentioned or even showed any traces of having a girl in my life all through school days and even beyond.
Having a conversation with my parents about love matters after service wasn’t impossible but like a sudden cold breeze amidst a warm wind, the conversation was going to be alien. “Hey Sam, hope you are doing fine?”
It was my Uncle’s Wife that had called and asked that she talk to me through my dad’s phone line. I never knew it was going to be an avenue to a discussion I had always craved for. “Send me your phone number, so we can talk more,” Aunty Adun said. “Okay ma, I replied.”
“Hello Sam, it’s been a while. How was service?” Aunty Adun inquired. “Very fine ma, Mummy told me she updated you on that, I just came back not too long,” I replied. After chatting for a while just like old family folks catching up, she changed the topic.
“So, who is the lucky girl? Or you want to tell me there is no lucky sister from that your fellowship somewhere?” As Aunty Adun concluded her statement, it was as if someone had poured an extremely cold water on my neck, as I was short of words.
“Well—huh—,” I stuttered. As I struggled to reply, like a doctor already aware of her patient’s illness, Aunty Adun stepped in “this is a safe space dear, you have nothing to worry about. I understand how dad and mum can be so harsh on you. All that was in the past, trust me. Let me share a secret with you today,” she said.
Like a man who had just been relieved of his pain, I felt relaxed. “Guess where I and your uncle met?” Anty Adun asked. “In a church I guess,” as I replied, she laughed.
“Why do everyone always think church, you are not the first person saying that, but anyways, we met at camp where we both went to serve our father land. Our meeting was divine because it seemed he was sent to be love of my life. We were matching on the parade field and I lost control, he was the one that carried me to the clinic and he had never met me before. The rest is history. But I can tell you that right from the day he saved me and took me to the clinic, he had always cared for me.”
Although Aunty Adun never sugar-coated her story, I knew exactly what she meant. “Right from the day my uncle saved her, he had been like a saviour and defender to her ever since.”
As I ruminated on the thoughts in my head, I had always known them to be love birds before they travelled out of the country but I never knew they met on the parade ground. That kind of love could only be made in heaven.
