She was popularly called Mama Iyabo. Her husband threw her out of their matrimonial home 15 years ago, along with her three children, after 15 years of marriage.
“I had earlier heard rumours about my husband and another woman. I knew he had girlfriends. He was doing well and living it up, though he took care of the home front but one day, like a man in a trance or one in the firm grip of a spell, he threw me and my children out. He said he was done with me and my ‘bush ways’ he said as a Senior Manager of one of the biggest breweries in the country, he needed a wife that fitted his new position. I was dazed. I wept. I begged. I threatened. I called in his family, my family, the church but he listened to no one. His mind was made up. He wanted a new wife, not a second wife. I was broken. I fell ill, very ill. I lost the will to live even but the fear and tears of my children pulled me back from the brink. Gradually, I rebuilt my life. It was tough and tortuous but we did it together, the children and I. Their father did not lift a finger to help us. Maybe his wife didn’t let him or he thought sending us money would make me return to him. “
Fast forward to 22 years after Mama Iyabo, Iyabo and Kole were ‘evicted’ by Baba Iyabo, the Senior Manager; 69-year-old once-successful, fine bobo suffered a stroke. His second wife had left him the previous year. Now a successful mother of a nurse and engineer, both resident in Canada, Mama Iyabo got a call from one hospital. Her former fast-talking husband now speech-impaired had written her number and name as his next- of-kin. Next of what? Of course, she flipped and screamed.
‘So, it was now time to remember me, me that had to live in a room that had no mosquito net. Me, that had to bathe behind an uncompleted building before daybreak and trek with my children to school every day? Me that had to supplement my income with menial jobs to put my children through school? He must be joking. He knows where his family is and my children and I are certainly not one of them. He should go and look for the wife who drove his cars and the children that slept in air-conditioned rooms while I suffered in a house that had no bathroom. No, he should look for those who enjoyed him in the mansion when his blood pressure was normal.’
Mama Iyabo’s anger was huge and justified. Why should she be the one cleaning the drool from a man’s mouth because the one he kissed day and night fled? Really, this thing called ‘tomorrow’ or ‘the future’ can be truly mean. If we all acknowledge that the day called tomorrow always arrive holding karma in one hand and the law of harvest in the other, we will all begin to do better today, right now. Mama Iyabo blocked the line that called her from the hospital and refused to pick any call from unknown numbers.
Then the physical pleas came in torrents, from everywhere. Trust the church to lead the forgiveness and restoration crusade (a topic for another day, that) including her children who flew in from Canada to beg her. That broke her and her resolve to pay Baba Iyabo back in his own coin.
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“It was hard but I eventually agreed to care for him in the hospital. Seeing him there helpless and gaunt, being fed through drips and tubes melted whatever anger was left when I walked into his private ward. All the anger gave way to pity. The plea in his eyes brought tears to my eyes. So this was all that remained of my once bossy and handsome don’t-argue-with-me husband? Where was all the bravado, the he-who-must-be-obeyed man who threw me out and then refused to pay my children’s school fees? His lips moved futilely, without making the words he so deeply wanted to deploy. His struggles made it impossible for me to hold on to my anger. He would look at me long and deep as if searching for what was going on in my heart. Eventually I started talking to him, told him to forgive himself as I had forgiven him. I held his hand and prayed with him twice daily. One morning, about 4 a.m, he woke me up in his peculiar way, told me to put his head on my lap so we could pray. I did. He died in the middle of that prayer session. I was happy that I was there for him but till today, I still feel the pain and pressure of the years he left us to fend for ourselves, groping in the dark while he took his second wife on summer holidays.”
If you were in Mama Iyabo’s shoes, what would you have done? Did Baba Iyabo deserve forgiveness? What exactly is forgiveness? For instance, could Mama Iyabo have just gone to the hospital to see her estranged husband, rubbed his bald head and say ‘I forgive you’ and left him in the care of his nurses and doctors? Or forgiveness was her staying beside him until he breathed his last? What if he had lived, would forgiveness have been the resumption of their marriage with Mama Iyabo taking her husband back? Would not taking him back mean she did not forgive him?
Not all women survive desertion and abandonment. Most children’s destinies get twisted when marriages break down. Daughters who would ordinarily have been called to bar at 23 become teenage mothers. Promising sons drop out of school and become coke-heads, depressed or criminals. How does a mother recover and forgive after months and years of hoping and wishing for what-could-have-been? This is why I do not join the multitude to do the evil of lynching any mother who refuses to let a deserter-father in when the children he abandoned become successful. Another long thing for another long day.
Rejoinder
Re- When forgiveness is hard (1)
Errrr….wow, I just read the subject title piece and honestly couldn’t believe it.
I thought maybe it was a case of HIV/AIDs or something but damn that was stone cold.
One of my major side attractions in life is trying to understand the human condition (the foundation of which I believe is based on selfishness) and this showed or continues to confirm my hypothesis.
It’s great reading your work every weekend (I get it through the Conclave News) just writing to appreciate and encourage you. Thank you ma.
Enjoy the weekend.
Regards,
Folarin A.,
