Folks, I sometimes watch and listen to some people and the only prescription that comes in mind is that "This person needs a tour to the mortuary or cemetery". The brazen display of superiority makes me shake my head in awe and in pittance.
Last year June, a very good friend of mine died. Isaac Gameli was his name. A very strong, carefree, athletic and a promising lad. He was my high school 100-meter runner. Watching him on the tracks was a spectacle to behold. He had gone to do some work to earn some money and got electrocuted. He died eventually.
His death took me to the Awudome cemetery for the first time although I have been passing there in a car. Entering the place, a sign post with the inscription " We were like you" could be eligibly seen. Yes, they were all like me I thought. Gameli was like me just some few days ago I mulled over solemnly.
The place was solemn as we followed the coffin which contained our friend religiously and in a well-rehearsed fashion. Not long after we had entered the first chamber, I eavesdropped a woman telling a friend by pointing to a tomb "that's Azumah Nelson's wife lying there"
I turned and watched too. Fast forwarding in the journey, a friend roared with a great laughter also pointing to a tomb too and said "ehh Atukwei Aryee, the way that mad man can worry". I watched too.
Folks, it is when you visit a cemetery and you come back you will begin to appreciate the word, humility. You will vow not to offend anybody again. When you look at how about a fortnight ago that loved one of yours was alive and now being thrown into a bush, it will only take the heart of a devil not to have a change of attitude towards their colleagues.
What stung me like a bee was the fact that, both Azumah Nelson's wife and the mad man were on the same line. Nothing differentiates them. They were all dead. That's the power of death; merciless and indiscriminatory.
One would have thought that the 'mad' man's tomb would have been smaller but no, they were all of the same size. Who they were didn't matter any longer.
Their level of prominence didn't matter anymore. They are on a turf that doesn't discriminate. When our elders say that death is a leveller, it's so true I thought.
Many people with good financial standings have passed on. Their money could not rescue them. The late Professor Mills, comrade Komla Dumor just to mention but a few. If 'level' or money could save life, they would be living now.
Colleagues, my heart aches when I see people behave as though they own the world while they don't even know what lies ahead of them the next second. The poor will die. The rich would also. The learned and the simple too. The vulnerability of man to death and the uncertainty of how and where one shall die scares me.
Let's relegate pride and arrogance. That 'level' of yours will be useless when you die and you shall die. Let's stop nursing deal seated animosity against our fellows. To err they say is human and to forgive is divine. It is in this same vein, that it's incumbent on the errant to apologise to the one they have offended.
Mahatma Ghandi once said that " The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong". It takes men with cojones and guts to apologise. This wouldn't only give you an inner satisfaction, but also enhance a peaceful co- existence.
Andrew Marvel said in his poem 'To his coy mistress' that "...then worms shall try, that long preserved virginity..." This has gotten nothing to do with one being a virgin but a lot to do with the fact that your achievement won't matter when death knocks at your door.
Your level won't matter that day...
Michael Omane (UCC)
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