“This school will not kill me o na everyday person go dey suffer? Kilode?” Tolu, my closest friend droned on and on. The sun was high in the sky and I could feel the beads of sweat collecting on my face and trickling between my legs and for the hundredth time in the space of six hours I cursed my full natural fro. “If only I had the mind to cut it”, I thought. “Ada Ada, are you not hearing your name? I’ve been talking to myself abi?” Tolu asked, her hands akimbo and a small frown on her slightly chubby face. “I’m sorry my love. This heat is too much and I can barely think. I just want to go home.” “Go home to man abi? God am I a goat?” she asked a mischievous smile on her face as she raised her eyes and palms to heaven. I shook my head and couldn’t help but chuckle. Tolu can be so dramatic, it was one of the reasons we were so close, two sides of the same coin. “That one concerns you, I don’t know what you are talking about abeg.” I laughed. “Okay o, continue lying to yourself. Anyways, I will see you in the hostel. There is something I have to do.” She said. “No wahala. I have to go anyways. I will see you later. Make I go baff, I don tire.” We waved each other good-bye and I started towards the direction of my hostel when I got the call that changed my life forever…

1 year later… 

I woke up with a start, soaked with sweat. I had a nightmare. I could hear the beep of the monitors, a particular loud beep that rang when her oxygen level was below normal. I could still feel the clench of her hands as she murmured at me, telling me “No, don’t go…” could see her soft body go limp, her mouth open, particles of the last meal I fed her still stuck to her teeth. My mum was a very beautiful, smart woman. Very witty and funny, basically the life of the party. I watched this energic ball of fire dwindle. Seven months earlier, my mother had been diagnosed with Lung cancer. She was in the final stage and had already started chemotherapy. The afternoon she called me and broke the news to me changed the course of my life. It was like drifting atop the sea on a plank of wood. Nothing prepares you for these things. Nothing prepares you to be the mother and nurse to your own mother. Naturally as the first born the duty to take care of my mother fell automatically to me. I was sick of it. I hated every moment I spent in that hospital but she is my mum, what could I do? She fought everyday to stay alive. She was scared at first, frantic and anxious but as time went on, her battle with cancer was one she was willing to lose. She said to me one day, one of those times when the drugs didn’t hit her, didn’t put her to sleep, “ Ada bekee, it is okay to die. Death is a gift. A calming break from this noisy crazy world and I want to lose this battle and rest…I want to go home.” I would rebuke and rebuke but she would only smile and tell me she would never leave my siblings and I.  Thinking back, I realized how up until her death I had been existing. How I did not know my identity, who I was until she rested. Now a year later as I laid back on my bed, the new “mother of the house” I thought of my siblings, my father and knew that I had to stop existing and start living. I promised myself that I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them and when indeed it is overwhelming, I knew that it is okay to take a step back, it is okay to breathe. It is okay to start all over again. It is okay to die. For death is rebirth.