Obituaristic and marital nonsense

It was a yearly ritual. Every year, on the day her husband died, she dressed up beautifully, went on top of his grave and danced to her satisfac­tion. For several hours, she’d boogie up and down, style after style, until she could dance no more. She’d then de­scend the grave and walk home panting yet contented.

When asked by reporters why she had taken to the yearly open-air disco dancing, the widow said it was in honour of DEATH which took away her husband. “When he was alive. I never had a moment’s peace,” she said.

What an honest confession about a dead person. She minced no words. The man gave her no peace, and that was exactly what she was saying. A widow in Sikaman would dare not say that of her deceased husband. His fam­ily members would procure pick-axes, hoes and cutlasses and descend on her with red eyes and tear her to pieces.

It is traditionally not proper to speak ill of people when they are dead, but some people are beginning to feel that the custom of speaking well about even dead criminals at funerals is not helping society either.

They claim that if the living know that all their misdeeds will be recount­ed at their funeral when they are dead, they will endeavour not to misconduct themselves while alive. I think that is a valid point, because the dead have had it too easy.

When someone volunteered to say that a deceased fellow died of alcohol, his neck was nearly twisted. What right did he have to air the cause of death even if it was true that the guy had died of too much bitters? In any case, did he perform any post mortem to ascertain the cause of death? And for what earthly or heavenly reason did he have to associate their loved one with an evil called ALCOHOL? “Next time you talk nonsense, we shall physically weaken your jaw.

It was at a funeral when a pastor undertook to say nice words about a dead common criminal that he was cor­rected by the deceased’s own profes­sional comrade.

He raised his right hand to signify that he wanted to chip in a point of or­der as the resident pastor spoke of how exemplary the dead man’s ways were. When no one bothered to give him the chance, he stood up and raised both hands, meaning that he had the con­stitutional right to slot in a rejoinder before the lies became over-whelming.

He was heavily drunk. Asked what he wanted to say, he broached the sub­ject that first and fore-most, he would recommend that the pastor be ex-com­municated from the church because he was a congenital liar, a quality unbecoming of a clergyman. He then proceeded to say the deceased was a criminal just like himself and deserved no praises in any church.

He intimated that the deceased, when he was alive, cheated him out of a booty, not once or twice, but many times, for which he never forgave him till he died. He said such a person’s body should not be brought to contam­inate the holiness of a church room. Before church elders could drag him out, he had spoken his mind.

I guess if the dead man had a soul that was present where he was laid in state, the soul would have repented right in the church room.

Well there are many problems associated with modern-day funerals. One of them which is getting solved gradually is the wake-keeping palaver. The Akyem Abuakwa Traditional Council has banned wake-keepings as a means of cutting down cost of funerals in the traditional area. The Presbyteri­an Church is also not encouraging its members to opt for wake- keeping in any event of death of a member.

What are wake-keepings for any­way? When there were no mortuaries in the past, wake was kept because fami­ly members could not leave their dead bodies and go to bed. Keeping wake has, therefore, outlived its usefulness in present day circumstances.

A wake-keeping today is an occasion where you can get a married woman drunk and seduce her, where young girls elope with married men for amo­rous purposes, and where people either get married or lose their spouses. Ev­erything is under the cover of darkness, supervised by Jimmy Satan.

A funeral that is without an elabo­rate wake-keeping can save at least a lot of money. A funeral that is without frivolous eating and boozing can also save a fortune. The dead must not be a burden for the living, just like getting married shouldn’t be any big deal.

The average Sikaman bride is married at least three times without any sane reason. Her Caucasian or Anglo-Saxon counterpart gets married just once in a very simply ceremony.

Why are many young men unable to marry? The fact is that they can’t. They don’t have the dough. They must KNOCK DOOR, ENGAGE and WED-three in one. By the time they are through, they are in debt to a tune of 5 million. No marriage is stable when the founda­tion is built on a $5 million debt.

I guess my great grandfather mar­ried his loving wife with two bottles of akpeteshie, five tubers of yam and a bottle of zomi. Check out how much I have to spend when I want wife. You can’t get a woman with akpeteshie, yam tubers and palm oil anywhere in Sikaman today. Even in the remotest cottage, they ask you to “do wedding”. It is a command, not a suggestion.

The result is that the young men can’t get married, and once they are virile and not impotent, they continue impregnating the young and unmarried girls, littering communities with kids born out of wedlock, many ending up as the street kids we see everywhere hawking barefoot instead of studying in school.

This article was first published

on Saturday, April 18, 1998