Two months after the demise of my senior colleague and friend, Dr Adom Winful, I complained bitterly to my mother-in-law about a certain sad nagging feeling that his demise had occurred too soon.
I sometimes struggle to accept the unfortunate incident. Consoling me, she reflected that that feeling was perhaps what made the sudden permanent loss of parting so much more painful to bear.
You second-guessed yourself and wondered repeatedly what could have been done differently.
As it turns out, I was not the only one who felt cheated by time. At his funeral, a gentleman, Jonathan Addo, walked up to me and introduced himself. He was also a close friend of Winful and had discussed me extensively with him.
A political economist by profession, he and Winful both felt we ought to have ample opportunities for mutual collaboration on a writing project. A few months to his passing, Winful pledged to introduce us “in the new year.”
Addo and I did indeed meet in the New Year, but at Winful’s funeral, cheated by time! Mistakenly, Winful thought he had time in the New Year, as did Addo and perhaps I. Alas!, unknown to us all, he had simply been timed out.
Dinner that never was
I last saw Winful two months to his demise. At the time, we agreed to have a small but special dinner for his family and close friends.
It was the responsibility of Adorkor and I to put the event together, being organised among other things to commemorate his award that November 2015, as a Fellow of the Ghana Medical Association. True to form, I procrastinated, thinking erroneously that I had forever.
I was travelling and then I was planning and then I wanted it to be perfect and I wanted this or that person to be present and so on and so forth. One day, I got an alert that health parameters were changing and that a dinner in Accra might be out of the question, someplace closer, maybe.
As it turned out eventually, there was simply no opportunity for the dinner. We had been cheated by time again.
No new year meeting
When I last spoke to Winful, I was heading to Kumasi with a firm promise to come and see him on New Year’s Day, in a matter of a few days. After three days in Kumasi, we flew back to Accra on New Year ’s Eve. The minute I switched on the phone, the alarming text message came through – he was no more. We did, in fact, proceed to Mampong the next day as scheduled, but alas, not to see Winful alive.
I have heard it said that one should live every day as though it was the last. What does this really mean? I suppose it means refraining from procrastinating on important matters, it means readily showing love when loved ones are alive rather than waiting for their deaths to make gigantic funeral donations, it means converting whatever time is available into quality time instead of hallucinating over a so-called ideal time.
Sometimes, one visits a family suffering the loss of a loved one. Though certainly a painful episode, one concludes from the generally relaxed conversation tone, the ready laughter over the shared memories, and the sheer absence of anguish and desperation that this family has come to a point of acceptance somewhat.
There are those that have observed that this somewhat easy acceptance is seen only in families that gave, received and shared all the love with their deceased relation while he/she was still alive. In death, therefore, there are no heartbreaking regrets of what could have been, as family members sleep, satisfied they held no love back.
May we all resolve to do what we can now, while our people are still alive to see, feel and know the true love that we have for them. And may we truly live each day as if it were the last even as we live life to the fullest, bringing smiles to the faces of loved ones sooner rather than later.
