My Dearest Grandfather: A Piece on Ageing

 My grandfather sits straight across from me at the dining table and for the first time I understand that this is a man who has lived more experiences than I possibly, currently imagine. He is a smiling man, he is happy to be here with me on this table, happy to be in my care (at least, I hope that he is). He quietly devours his food and I imagine him in different stages of his life. I see him as a child, ever so energetic, running around half-naked with his friends on the sandy village floor. At this time, our country does not even have independence from the British. How did that shape his perception of himself and his fellow Nigerians? When he saw a white man, did he feel inferior? Angry? Was it originally the first as a child, before becoming the latter through disillusionment? 

I imagine him as a blushing teenager, shy from the uncomfortable blossoming buds of a first love. I amuse myself with the idea of him loving his fellow boy; I depress myself with the image of him harassing girls. I depress myself further by picturing his skinny self in an ill-fitting military uniform, rising to the ranks to Army Commander and losing his playmates, his school friends, his humour, his smile, his youthful years. Death all around him, but only brushing past his cheek. Grief becomes so familiar that it is almost a mirror.

I wonder what was life like after the war? How does a person comfortably transition from Army Commander to a working man? After eating, drinking and sleeping gun powder, you can finally live like a human being, not a killing machine. Then, he finds a woman he wants to marry, her smile and her words captivate him (at least I hope so), then he finds another wife again. He has children all around him, life all around him, but death comes again, but life comes again. He is always meeting the two, one after the other, as he walks through the beautiful thorny rose garden of life. It is as if he is going in circles and they are standing in the same place, waiting for him. Always. 

I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. How he felt when his first grandchild was born (I am not his first grandchild), how he feels as his children marry and bring forth even more grandchildren. How dear does he hold life to his heart after seeing it extinguished like tongues of fire, after extinguishing it himself? When a child is born and the babe is put in his arms, does he hold back tears, forever marvelled by the fact that all the death in this world cannot prevent life from coming back again and again? Whenever he sees my siblings and I, is he so happy to see us grow more and more, taller and taller? Is he happy that he was fortunate enough to survive this long? Will he do it all over again if he could?