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Describe an event that has changed your life to date, or make up and describe an event that you think would change your life forever.
On that fateful Thursday morning in the year 2010, he left us for work, telling me that he would get my school bags and all that I would need for the resumption of school which was supposed to be the next week, and also promised to come back with a lot of goodies, and I hoped and looked forward to his return on that Thursday evening.
I and my mother were the last to sleep that evening because we waited for him but he did not return and so many times she tried his numbers but none were going through, we felt perhaps his phone went off due to low battery and we all went to bed with the assurance that he would come back the next day but he never did and till today he never came back till date.
We waited the next day and continued calling his number until someone picked up and told us that he had been admitted to one of the hospitals in Lagos, but could not be seen until everything was under control, my mom insisted that she needed to see her husband and when she went there, she was refused entrance, "Nobody was allowed to see him yet" in their voice, so she came back home but with hope and faith that her husband was alive.
Since we lived in the barracks Sunday came, a few church members, our pastor, and friends of my dad after service came to the house to visit us, where the demise of my father news was broken to us.
My world came crumbling, my life stood still, and I saw my hope dashed to the walls and shattered with no piece to pick for patching, I prayed for death, and kept asking God why would he let death take my dad away from me, knowing fully well that he was all I had. He was my best friend, my mentor, and the only person who gave me hope when I had known. I wept and for days, sleep was far from me because I kept having nightmares of him, I kept asking God why he didn't let me see him for the last time, perhaps he had something to say to me that would keep me striving when he is no longer there to hold my hands but I got no answer and for years, I blamed God for everything.
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One thing was sure life after my father's death was never going to be the same for me and indeed, it has not been the same. One or two months after his death, my father was laid to rest in his hometown, and then, reality set in because I began hustling not just for myself but for my family as the first child. It became worse after I struggled to get my Senior Secondary School Certificate against all odds, I experienced abuse physically, emotionally, and psychologically. I became a shadow of myself, I forgot my dreams, I became contented with just having a certificate since that was all I could get, and continued fighting tooth and nail for survival (feeding, shelter, and clothing) for myself and my family.
His death caused us not just pain but started life afresh and that also included me learning life the hard way. From a girl who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, a girl who had all she wanted, needed, and requested without stress, from a girl who was adored and sent to the best school to a girl who had to endure abuse just to get her certificate, to a girl who had to take up the job of a house girl to be able to gather money for her mother who has been sick and bedridden for two years, to a girl who had to suffer and beg to meet ends meet and shelter over our head, to a girl who had to take on two or more jobs just for money.
For someone who had plans of finishing school at an early age, furthering my education overseas, having her own various businesses while working as a career woman, having a house of her own, her car, adopting kids, and living her dream life all at an early age, I would call the event that changed my life till date an unwanted and unplanned event because nobody wants to be told that their loved one is no more and nobody has ever planned regardless that we all know that one day we will all die of dying, this is the truth of life.
This isn't about looking down on myself or being ungrateful, I am grateful to God for where I currently am and for not one bit looking like where I came out from and what I passed through but one truth is, I am not where I had envisioned I would be at this age and stage of my life, his death took and shattered my dreams and that event of his death changed my life to date,
This is my entry to Hive Naija Weekly Prompt | Edition 37