It was a cool Monday morning in the office on the Bajulaiye Road in Shomolu, Lagos.
Omoh greeted me “Good Morning” and I smiled as I welcomed him. But he was not looking cheerful. He looked like a man with a cloak of sadness.
“Mama Seyi is gone,” he said mournfully.
I dropped The Punch newspaper in my hands and rose from my seat.
“When?”
“Last Thursday.”
‘I thought she was recovering?”
“Yes. But she relapsed and did not recover again.”
“Oh, my God!”

Mama Seyi was a great mother. She did all she could to make all her sons and daughters succeed. She and her beloved husband of blessed memory were good neighbors of my parents. They have all passed on. Mama Seyi sold cooked beans and yam and loaves of “Agege Bread”. Many neighbors always enjoyed her food as they crowded the spot where she used in front of their residence on the Bajulaiye Road. She only stopped cooking when she became ill. The pictures of the past flashed in my mind as I remembered the good old days of Mama Seyi.

“She requested that we should not keep her body in the morgue, so we have already taken her to our hometown and buried her accordingly.”
“May her soul rest in peace,” I prayed solemnly.

Omoh told me that he was going to Abule Egba on the outskirts of Lagos to visit her mother, the younger sister of Mama Seyi.
“How is your mother bearing it?”
“She is missing her badly.”
“Do your best to comfort her.”


~ Monday September 13, 2010.