USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
By Chris Agbedo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and a contributing analyst to USAfrica.
There are days that pass like whispers, and there are days that arrive with the weight of eternity.
This day—April 5—does not merely return; it resurfaces, bearing in its quiet folds the echo of a voice, the tremor of a call, the unanswerable riddle of loss.
Three years ago, at the fragile hour when dawn hesitates between night and day, a call came.
It was your wife—Mama Emma—her voice unsure, fractured by something she herself could not yet name: “Your brother is not feeling well; I don’t know what he’s doing like this o…”
Words without shape. Meaning without anchor.
A message suspended between fear and disbelief.
Before sense could be made of it, another voice broke through—firmer, yet burdened with a finality too heavy for speech:
“In fact, Sam is gone!”
Gone?
To where?
That word—so small, yet so merciless.
A word that closes doors without showing which one was opened.
A word that demands acceptance where understanding is denied.
“Where?” I had asked again.
Silence answered.
And in that silence, a world began to collapse.
Moments later came another update, almost procedural, as though routine could soften the rupture: “We’re taking him to St Mary’s Hospital.”
But even then, something within already knew—some quiet, stubborn intuition that this was no longer about illness, but about absence.
I dressed in haste, each movement mechanical, unbelieving.
I broke the awful news to my wife—words that did not feel like mine—and set out for Ogwurute, driving not merely through distance but through disbelief itself.
At the hospital, grief had already gathered.
The wives were there, their tears unrestrained, baptizing the morning with sorrow.
No one needed to speak; the air itself had become a language.
I was led to the back.
And there you were.
Samuel.
Sam Spaco!
Lying still upon a trolley—cold, composed, almost serene.
You looked as though you had merely withdrawn into a deeper sleep, untouched by struggle, unmarked by farewell.
Your familiar fullness, that chubby, handsome and reassuring presence, remained intact—as if life had only just stepped out and might yet return.
But death had already spoken its quiet verdict.
No struggle.
No warning.
No explanation.
Only the tyranny of unanswered questions:
What happened?
How?
When?
Why?
Questions that rose like smoke and dissolved into the indifferent sky.
For those present, the impulse was immediate—take him home, commit him to the earth without delay, let grief find closure in ritual.
But something resisted within me.
Death, I felt, must not be hurried into silence.
It must be acknowledged, prepared for, given the dignity of pause.
I reached out to our brothers. Counsel was sought—and wisdom, mercifully, prevailed.
And so, instead of a hurried farewell, you were wheeled gently into the stillness of the morgue—a temporary holding between presence and memory, between what was and what must now be remembered.
From there, we journeyed home—Azebọ Ọlido—where the unspeakable was finally spoken, where your name was no longer a call to presence but an announcement of absence.
Since that day, grief has not departed. It has merely changed its language.
It lives in quiet recollections.
In sudden pauses.
In the way certain mornings feel heavier than others.
And now, as another April 5 returns—coinciding with Resurrection Day—the paradox deepens.
For while the world proclaims victory over death, memory insists on the persistence of loss.
Yet perhaps therein lies the mystery.
For resurrection is not only a promise of life beyond death; it is also the stubborn refusal of love to be extinguished.
It is memory rising against oblivion.
It is the quiet assurance that though the body yields to earth, the imprint of a life—its warmth, its laughter, its presence—remains inscribed upon the souls of those who loved.
Samuel, you did not merely leave.
You linger.
In the cadence of our conversations remembered.
In the spaces you once filled without effort.
In the invisible architecture of family that still bears your imprint.
Death may have claimed your breath, but it could not claim your meaning.
And so today, we do not only mourn— we remember.
We do not only grieve— we bear witness.
That you lived.
That you mattered.
That you are loved beyond the reach of time.
May the soul of Samuel Okechukwu Agbedo and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in perfect peace.
*Amen*.
