My colleague’s child has terminal liver failure.
“I’m such a terrible mother,” Hannah my colleague had mumbled one morning at work. “I locked my child, Bob, outside as I left for work yesterday. The neighbors took him in and called my partner.” Her partner had called yelling at her yesterday, and I recall seeing her run out of the office. She never returned till the next morning.
Yet I was puzzled. Eim lock pikin outside? I was thinking of that when she said, “Don’t look at me that way, I only let him out so he could take a pee in the morning, then I forgot him outside.” Then she added that “Bob’s fur was even shaggy” in the rain. All those months she said Bob’s clothes, Christmas and winter shoes didn’t fit anymore; that he had torn some of their books and peed on their furniture, she was referring to a dog!
The white man is nothing like us. At superstores, animal stuff nearly takes up the biggest spaces. Special seasonal clothing for dogs; toys for dogs and cats; numerous packaged food and treats.
While knocking over a couple of bottles one Friday evening with fellow Nigerians, one of us said something weird:
“The scale of importance for living things in obodo oyibo: trees first, then pets, children, women and, lastly, poor wretched men.” Though he said this after consuming bottles of the good stuff, it rang true. In the absence of house helps, we have all become more domesticated; it is only on such weekends that we rue our new stations as houseboys in foreign land, but that’s a story for another day.
Hannah was absent from work one day, grieving at home with her partner after spending several hours at the vet only to get the sad diagnosis. When I heard the news from another colleague that morning, I was going to continue with life but then I thought to myself: What would an oyibo do in the situation? It dawned on me that years in Canada have not subdued the Nigerian in me. In Nigeria, I never sent a get-well note to a pet owner, nor have I done so here in Canada.
And Bob is not just a pet: he bore my colleague’s last name, a dear child of proud parents for over 13 years. He is an important family member, so my message to his parents must be measured and comforting. That is the culture here. Though fully Nigerian, I have become westernized in many ways: these days I ask my male friend to send my regards to his husband. I learnt my lessons the day another colleague with whom I always had lunch, told me she and her wife went with the kids to the cinema. Your wife? I had stuttered. Later I realized the damage I had done to our fragile friendship, as the story didn’t end well.
For long I could not come up with a decent message for Bob’s mom. I became deeply emotional. I jumped on Google—my only friend in such situations—and discovered, to my dismay, that one way or the other Bob would die soon. That realization changed whatever would have been the tone of my message, so I continued my internet search to learn how best to frame it.
What I found was amazing. Funeral homes for pets, cremation and burial services, get-well pet cards—the last being just what I was looking for. But that dragged me further down the hole of discovery. There were whole blogs on what not to say too, articles on what to say and do to support a friend who might lose a pet, and what to say when someone’s pet has cancer or liver disease. All that information was overwhelming. I managed to read through as many articles as possible, and came up with a message packed full with internet education. Pleased with myself, I pushed the send button, hoping Hannah at the other end would find comfort.
My self-satisfaction quickly dissipated when hours passed without any response from Hannah. I waited the whole day until now: sadly Bob didn’t make it. He had died after an emergency surgery. I learned that the procedure cost quite a fortune, though not as much as that of some lady who paid for an eye surgery for her dog: the surgery cost her the equivalent of four million naira, yet her dog got run over by a truck shortly afterwards.
Bob died peacefully and lived a long eventful life filled with love and care, mourned by parents who sincerely loved him.
He will be missed by his parents and those of us at work who shared in his life from a distance. His mother is devastated and I pray she heals; her grief is deep, like that of a human loss.
In fact, to fully appreciate that loss as a Nigerian, I had to humanize it. At that level Bob becomes an only child who lived and died, leaving grieving parents alone in the world. As they say that all dogs go to heaven, may Bob’s soul rest in perfect peace.