My mom has been sick for two years. Everybody thinks it’s a curse. I don’t know what I believe, but I always tell myself that whatever she’s suffering from, there are lessons to learn, so I’m focused on the lessons.
My dad died after several weeks of illness. He was the breadwinner, though he had retired. At some point, his death was expected because of how long he had been sick, but when it finally happened, we were broken. The patriarch who held the family together was gone. My elder siblings were out of the house, living their own lives. I was with Mom. I saw the depth of her brokenness.
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She cried every day and wondered how she was going to carry on with life because Dad had been the one working and taking care of all of us. She was a housewife, something my dad had always fought against. He wanted her to do something. He started an agrochemical shop for my mom, but my mom ran it down within a few months and came home to stay.
My dad gave up, so after that, my mom never worked again, using different excuses not to work. It was the reason my dad’s death hit her more than it hit anyone else.
Dad left a house for us. After his burial and everything, Mom thought it wise to rent out the house and move to her family house. After a series of problems in her family house, she rented a new place for us to move into so she could rely on the rent from the house to survive.
In this new neighborhood, Mom started a new relationship with an older man. She told me the man’s wife was dead, just as her husband was dead. Later, it came out that the man had a wife. Someone stopped me on the street and told me, “Warn your mom to stop seeing that man because he has a wife, and that wife is very unforgiving.”
I delivered the message exactly as it was given to me. My mom denied the accusation vehemently and even told me not to bring silly gossip home. She said the man was divorced and had been divorced for years.
Out of frustration, I told my older siblings about it. My elder brother didn’t handle it well. He was so angry and called my mom a disgrace for stealing another woman’s husband. My mom got angry and turned her anger on me. She made living with her a nightmare, especially when that man came around.
I slept in a neighbor’s room because the man came to spend the night in our house. Eventually, my mom told me she was moving into the man’s house and couldn’t take me with her, so I should find a way to survive on my own. I had just started my first job and was earning a small salary. I called my brother and told him. He told me not to leave the house my mom had rented. He would help me renew the rent when it expired.
My mom went to live in this man’s house, and for a while it all looked peaceful and calm. The gossip stopped. The shame stopped being shameful. My mom had taken over fully. For six years, my mom lived with this man until he fell sick and his children started coming home. That was when the fight started.
They warned my mom to leave the house so the man’s wife could come and take care of him. My mom fought hard, asking them where that wife had been all those years. The man’s wife eventually came, but my mom said no—she wasn’t going to move out of the house. She had the man’s support, so she stood her ground.
I heard everything that was going on, but I lacked the right to have a say. Then the man died. As usual, the family split into two: those who supported my mom and those who supported the lawful wife. When the man was eventually buried, the family came together to ask my mom to vacate the house so they could decide what they would do with it.
My mom said she wasn’t going to move because her husband, the man who hadn’t even sent drinks to her family for marriage rites, had asked her to keep the house after his demise. The whole family, plus the man’s children, ganged up against my mom. Even my own siblings came together to get my mom out of that house. She didn’t move.
The man’s lawful wife told her one day, “The time for you to leave will come one day, and no one will ask you to leave.”
My mom fell. Not from any serious height, but she broke her right leg in two places. We went for her and took her to the hospital. That was her last day in that house. She spent four months at the hospital without any progress in healing her leg. We took her to herbal centers, and that was when my mom started developing sores on her left leg and behind her back.
She’s alive, but with each passing day, she smells like a rotten piece of meat. It’s very hard to go close to my mom without being overwhelmed by the smell. We’ve hired about seven caregivers in just one year. They come, and they leave without saying goodbye, yet my mom hasn’t healed an inch.
What pastors haven’t we engaged? What spiritual centers haven’t we taken her to? What herbal practitioners, medical professionals, and doctors haven’t we consulted? Her song every day now is, “Allow me to die. What am I living for?”
It even sounds like death has abandoned her. My siblings contribute money, mostly to take care of her, but at this point, I have to shout and beg before they’ll send their money. Everyone is tired. My brother would say, “I didn’t send her to go after someone else’s husband. Allow my money to rest.”
Who Would You Choose, A Rich Man Or A Man Who’s Good In Bed?
What are the lessons?
To know when to fight and when to walk away. My mom didn’t know the difference between the two, hence her suffering. I’m not happy about her situation. I don’t seek to gloat, and I’ve never told her, “I told you so.” She knows her mistakes, and I know she regrets them, and that’s enough. I pray for her. I pray for healing so our little resources can breathe again.
—Serwaa
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