Charity finished Strong!
“When through the deep waters I call thee to go The rivers of grief shall not thee overflow
For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress” John Keith 1787
This is one of two stanzas of a famous song, “How firm a foundation ...” that encapsulates the last four years of my life with my recently departed wife of thirty-four years, Charity.
It came as a surprise to me when she decided to leave work and start the Masters at Athabasca University, Canada, and upon completing that, the PhD program at the University of Ilorin. The four years that the PhD lasted was a time of adjustment indeed. Firstly, the travelling distance between Ilorin and Lagos was fraught with the danger of accidents so we decided to make only a few journeys meaning we were visiting no more than once or twice in six months. Secondly, she started the programme of intervening in the education of the village school children in Okuama, Delta State. Okuama, on the Forcados River, is a typical village in the Niger Delta. The Oil prospecting activities of the foreign companies have destroyed the fishing stock of the creeks and there are few amenities in the villages. Teachers, rather than being domiciled in work locations, prefer to travel from mainland communities where they have access to water, electricity, roads and health services all of which are absent in the villages. Many of these teachers do not always report for work so that the children are often left to themselves. Achievement rates are therefore very poor and the children often play most days. Charity decided to equip the house left by her grandmother as a library/resource Center for these village children. She provided thirty computer tablets with software and full school curricula including ebooks and testing materials that a serious student can use for self study. This Center was open to the students after school hours and was furnished with an electricity generating set. She knew how difficult it would be to get funding for the project so she first sold her car and raised support from family and friends for the project. Later, she realized she needed to support the women in the village with some means to sustain their children, she embarked on fishing projects so to supply them with fishes they can dry and sell to generate income. On her sick bed, she realized that several of the children could still not cope with school because of inadequate feeding, she started planning to give them one meal a day in addition to what the parents could give. She was still planning this when the final crises came that took her life.
The first time we started chemotherapy treatment, we were to be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary in September 2015. I remember my melancholic state of mind thatFriday morning. I said to her: “Do you know what today’s date is? And do you realize it is our wedding anniversary?” She knew. And was she not sad that we were in the hospital doing chemo instead of rejoicing at home? Charity astonished me with her answer! First, she said we had had thirty-two anniversaries that were uneventful. Second, she was being given a chance to live. On these two counts, she said we ought to have a heart of thanks giving! I was silenced by the clarity of her mind and the certainty that she was just not ready to entertain any melancholic thoughts! We simply focused on our duties and I stopped trying to bring up “negative” thoughts! The chemo treatment was elaborate and really tedious. The tests before and after as well as the ancillary drugs to prevent reaction to the chemo. These are enough to kill the faint-hearted. All I heard from Charity in all this are thanksgiving that she did not suffer pain! “God knows,” she would say, “that I have a low tolerance level for pain.”
After six chemo sessions the results still showed the cancer was spreading, we were advised to do a number of radiotherapy sessions. Only one linear accelerator was operational in the whole of Nigeria. Luckily it was at the University of Lagos. The eight weeks on this machine was quite difficult. The scheduling issues and the waiting time to get to the machine was the big problem and there were days we waited six to eight hours without service; and the hapless operators continued to do their best as the demand on the machine was terribly great. At chemo, at CT scan or radiotherapy, Charity’s evening talks at home were focused on the people she met at these machines who came with bigger health challenges than herself! There was the case of a younger woman of about thirty years – just like our own children, who was engaged to be married but had breast cancer. The groom to be not only canceled the wedding but demanded his bride-price back! The poor girl had no job and could not even pay for treatment! Charity focused our discussion on how such people could be helped. We also saw adolescents and teenagers being treated for cancer! She would sit up and keep wondering how those parents were coping seeing how hard it had been for us to pay all the bills! None of these things stopped the fish or education program at Okuama! She spent the intervening times between the chemo sessions planning and orchestrating the fish feeding and husbandry on the phone, by internet and all other means apart from physically travelling which she was not able to do on account of the treatment.
In her hour of need, Charity “gave birth” to two adolescent boys who she practically adopted as children. One came to us because we needed a gateman and after talking to the young man, she decided we should help him with his education. Oliver, who came to us with incomplete WASSCE results on account of failure in Mathematics, ended up with a complete WASSCE results that included A1 in Math and B2 in Further Math – a result that paved his way into a direct admission into the University of Lagos on the Merit list. The results came in three weeks before Charity’s death. She held to it as a trophy like any proud mother would have done! Next came Daniel. His coming to stay with us was due to the failure of the arrangement that brought him from Koma to live with another family. Charity refused to return Daniel to the village insisting that we have a duty to give him education. And she did these despite all her husband’s angry protestations! It was as if she knew that “the night cometh, when no man can work”!
Charity’s life is a figure lesson to me in several ways! She always insisted that we must have light loads in this world and be ready to keep moving as God directs. She felt that once we became too comfortable, we could not at the same time be effective Christians. She refused her blessing to aquire land for a retirement home, arguing that what we had was sufficient for our current and future needs. As far as she was concerned, I was solving a problem that did not exist. That, in her dictionary, was the definition of idleness! Looking at Charity’s last year in this life, I can only say that she finished strong! She spent time looking after other people despite her own big needs! She faced the adversity of declining health with thankfulness and resignation while taking every opportunity to get treatment.
She gave thanks to God for sparing her from pain and that remained so until the very last day when she had such a great pain that the doctors, try hard as they did, could not relieve! And thereafter, she was no longer with us! She was gone! And she left behind, footprints in the sands of time! May be bold enough to carry on!
“When through fiery trials, thy pathway shall lie
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply
The flames shall not hurt thee my only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine!”
John Keith 1787