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When the news arrived that his son’s car had slammed into another vehicle in the opposite direction while attempting to dodge a herd of roaming cattle, Senator Moro felt his world shook, certainly every thing around him stopped momentarily.
He had already buried a grandson twelve hours earlier, the earth of sleepy Okungaga still fresh, and now another loss pressed its cold hand on his shoulder.
He turned his eyes to the mortuary balcony, not with trembling limbs but with the measured poise of a man who knows that time can not be rewound, that lament will not turn the hands clock.
He stood, shoulders squared, a thin line of sweat glistening at his neck, the only betrayal of the storm inside him. The attendants moved about, preparing the body, and Moro watched, his breath steady as they slipped the son’s travelling box onto the mortuary floor, whispering a silent promise of a final journey.
One of his children reached into the box, lifted a simple multi- colour up – and down jumper, and took it inside the mortuary. At this point, Abba, anxious to take a glimpse of son’s body, asked whether he could come inside the mortuary.
The attendant turned down his request as if to spare him more of fatherly heart- wrenching agony. He stood calm, perhaps wondering why the attendant could turn down the last wish of a father.
Now, he moved closer to me , I tried to tell him a story, perhaps to amuse him in the hope that the storm raging in him could simmer. He gave a suppressed smile.
When the embalming was done, he walked, step by measured step, to the place where his son lay. He placed a hand on the cold forehead of deceased son, then turned, stormed out stoically and thus the beginning of our long journey to Okungaga, in Okpokwu Local Government Area of Benue State, his home local government area, one of the nine Local Government areas he represents at the Red Chamber in Abuja, 470 kilometres away via Lokoja.
The road stretched, the sun rose and fell, but Moro’s gait never faltered. We arrived at the village before the clock struck nine that evening, the mourners already gathered, the grave already waiting.
He stood still again, his composure intact as his kinsmen guided his son into the earth while he watched with the same calm and candour he had carried from the balcony of the mortuary in Abuja to the wailing night of his Okungaga village.
Now it was 12 midnight, time to retire and prepare for another round of journey back to Abuja where the story of this unimaginable tragedy and Senator’s courageous walk with death all began.
From James Uloko JP Facebook page (Uloko is Executive Director, Corporate Services, North Central Development Commission)
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