Thought Picnic: The Ephemeral Gift of Life

A Final Gathering

My very first conversation on Microsoft Teams this morning, returning to work, left me numb with shock as I was unexpectedly told sad news that brought tears to my eyes.

Only six weeks earlier, I was in Lancaster for a leaving gathering. We had been colleagues, then he led my team before an opportunity he could not refuse arose, and he was off to a new adventure. We all wished him well.

Since I work remotely, that gathering was our first meeting; it turned out to be our last. How ephemeral life can be. It can be simultaneously resilient and enduring, yet also so transient.

In times like these, I find comfort in the words of the Bible: “How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear” [Bible Hub: Job 14:1 & Job 14:2].

Numbering Our Days

The Psalmist says, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” [Bible Hub: Psalm 90:12]. I do not make New Year's resolutions because life is already a challenge. Maintaining the routine is hard enough without stressing over unattainable goals that fizzle out in months, if not weeks.

I am grateful for each day; it is the present, which is a gift of grace. Everyone runs their race, and no one knows when they will reach the finish.

Then we are swept into the eternity of memories and dreams. At that point, we console their loved ones and cherish the indelible mark they left on us during the brief time life afforded us.

May their soul rest in peace. What a sad start to the year.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

John Coll: Helpless against a crooked executor

Our mortal powerlessness

Yesterday marked a decade since the passing of my friend and mentor John Coll. As a blogger, I would normally have written something to commemorate and memorialise the day. The blog I wrote last year was meant for yesterday, I was a year off.

Blog - John Coll: Friend, Mentor, Gentleman – January 2015

Blog - John Coll: Calling on Herbert Dzinotyiweyi to fulfil his wishes – December 2013

Much as I want to reflect on our friendship, there are issues of understanding trust and the powerlessness of keeping that trust when you are no longer in the picture.

It brings to mind when Queen Elizabeth II gave her Christmas message desiring that the Duchess of Cornwall as the spouse of the Prince of Wales become the Queen Consort when he assumes the throne. That wish lasted until the coronation of King Charles III when he as king regnant decided his consort would be crowned Queen.

The clear message there is that regardless of the desires of the much-loved Queen, once she joined her ancestors, the powerful effect of her determination had gone with her passing. There is only one monarch in a kingdom and this time, it was Charles III, we had left the Second Elizabethan era for the new Carolean age from the 8th of September 2022.

The danger of a sole executor

In the affairs of life, we exercise both choice and control to varying extents, our presence enables us to order, arrange, and challenge situations to align with our liking and expectations. However, in our passing, where we cannot exercise control or authority, we rely on trusted persons to fulfil our wills, testaments and bequeaths.

There is a clear basis for an executor of an estate and there is law and precept that governs that responsibility, yet it can be abused. John chose the ‘trusted’ financial manager of his company to execute his will, whether it would have been prudent to distribute that responsibility seeing that John had been an employer of labour and skill for decades is another thing.

When John passed on, the primary elements of his will, such as his funeral and the disposal of his estate were followed through and seemingly completed quite promptly. The other part of his will which included bequests to 10 individuals, mostly outside the UK did not get fulfilment.

Once the executor had seen the largesse of the estate the trust reposed in him evaporated into avarice and over years, he schemed to transfer the full value of the estate after probate of about £780,000 to himself. He might have siphoned it out of the country or gambled it away, but he also had another plan, for he had citizenship of Zimbabwe and naturalisation in the UK.

I was onto him in 2019 when I learnt that most beneficiaries of John’s will had not been informed, and those who should have known were kept from prying because the executor feigned complexity of managing the estate and the required taxes.

He escaped accountability and justice

As I was not a beneficiary, I could only inform and instigate in the hope that John’s wishes would be fulfilled, and accountability is looked for as pertains to the fiduciary duty of an executor. Sadly, the police mishandled the situation and allowed the executor a window of opportunity to escape justice leaving the beneficiaries bilked of consequential resources that could have been impactful on their lives if John’s wishes had been conducted.

The lesson here is not only in choosing a trusted lieutenant or friend to execute your estate, especially in the absence of close relations to do the same but in distributing that responsibility so that the executors can hold each other accountable and true to the requirements of the testator.

Whether John had any insight into the character or integrity of his executor, one cannot tell, but with hindsight, the executor was anything but trustworthy. Mortal man is at a loss, for a will has no enforcement until the person is confirmed dead and the same person is powerless to ensure that their will is totally implemented according to the spirit and the letter of will.

A thought on accountable executors

As a man of faith, one of the reasons why Jesus Christ had to rise again from the dead was that the will for man to have eternal life and a relationship with God came into force with His death and the shedding of His blood for our sins. He rose again to ensure his testament was followed completely, that in accepting His sacrifice on the cross and declaring Him Lord, He confers the same sonship He has with God the Father on us too.

Imagine if, at the implementation of a will, the testator had the means to ensure every jot and title of their will was fully done without any challenge to the executor or resorting to the courts to redefine or alter your intention, purpose, and desire. Trust is a fleeting commodity, when it comes to executing a will, please ensure you have built extensive accountability into the process.

It is not John’s fault that things turned out this way, I never had reason to question either his instinct or his judgment when he was alive, people change and when it comes to money and worse still, the love of money, it is the root of all evil, the unconscionable evil that consumed Herbert Dzinotyiweyi.

How we live the life or death of our spoken words

Mind what you say

I was recently involved in a conversation that left me quite perturbed as my interlocutor stressed and hammed on about their difficulty with one issue or the other. Their belief in their precarity was such that I found it impossible to intervene and an intervention was dreadfully needed.

Usually, I stop or probably warn people about saying unwholesome and unprofitable things because I believe our speech has a spirit of creative energy and purpose. The words we speak carry weight about who we are, and how we think, and for all, consequently, define the circumstances in which we find ourselves now and into the future.

If you continue to speak about incapacity, inability, difficulty, and hardship, and hold expressions of pessimism that you inadvertently say with conviction, these words create the worlds around you and sadly you become a prisoner of your thoughts that have become your beliefs; what you say in words become your world.

Having the wrong perspective

It is a discipline to hold one’s tongue, choose words carefully, and keep one’s peace if we have nothing good to say about ourselves or others. Practising silence over expressing oneself might help review what we have avoided saying.

Then you ask, what best informs the background of thoughts that become words that show up as lived experience? You need a new perspective, a positive and progressive perspective, one that sees you in a different light, with opportunity, capability, and an unquenchable undefeatable spirit.

That is only possible especially if you are of the Christian faith, if you begin to see yourself as God sees you and then you say what God says about you.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life]. [Bible Hub: II Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)]

The new creation truth of knowing you have been reborn of God and living a new life is one we rarely grasp in any understanding or fulness, but knowing this change and that it is not one of effort, but of the grace of God is the beginning of renewal.

Know all good things about you

That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. [Bible Hub: Philemon 6 (KJV)]

We need to find out who we are from God’s perspective and acknowledge every good thing that is in us, not out of our own doing, but by and in Christ Jesus. Knowing this and thinking this along with seeing the great promises of God toward us would change our perspective and the words we begin to speak.

This brings me back to the crux of the matter, what we speak can create life or wreak the havoc of death, you would want to give life to ambition, to health, to prospects, to opportunity, to happiness, to the fulfilment of dreams and much else.

The tongue is a master controller

A good deal of this comes from what you have conditioned yourself to believe borne of the limitations of your perspective as a mere hapless human being or a creature of God’s manifest and limitless creativity.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words. [Bible Hub: Proverbs 18:21 (AMP)]

What fruits and consequences of our words are we living and is it time to start speaking differently by aligning ourselves to what God thinks of us and the value God places on us that he sent His only begotten Son to the world to save us?

“For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. [Bible Hub: John 3:16 (AMP)]

Please click on the links shared with the Bible verses to see parallel translations for more understanding and context.

Trains, bloodstains, and brains

A deathly train smash

You are always trying to figure out what persuades people to bring it all to an end. Our sorrowfully sympathetic inclination is then put upon by the public stage they have adopted to bring the screaming crescendo of existence to the deafening silence of an ignominious end on a busy intercity railway line.

You do wonder if this was deliberate, a murder perhaps, or an accident. Only some days before, the transport police published a YouTube video of a near miss at a railway crossing.

A pedestrian in a pique of nonsensical urgency had clambered over the lowered barrier gate, ignoring the flashing lights or the siren to cross and be on their way. Just as a speeding train missed sending him splattering into oblivion.

Easy living interrupted

Over an hour's wait of being detained on our train at Milton Keynes Central railway station, we were told that the remains and quite likely in many places had been removed and we might soon be proceeding to London having enjoyed the train company's generosity of a free bottle of still water.

You cannot be left in any doubt, that the incident of a human being impeding a fast-moving train is almost always irrecoverable. The definiteness of being a goner is as sure as the going is quite gone that we can agree the person is totally gone.

In the aftermath of it

We may never know the name of this victim of seemingly untenable circumstances that defy understanding. That we are caught in this temporary delay for the eternal departure of another should neither be seen as selfish nor selfless, for but the grace of God go we.

There may be regrets as there might be mourning. The emergency services attending another gruesome sight that might haunt or leave them inured, after witnessing similar tragic endings and cleanups.

As we pray for the repose of the soul of the too swiftly despatched, may journey mercies attend us to our destinations.

Life can be a fleeting thing, O that we may have the joy of living to be thankful regardless of what experiences we have had. I arrived safely over 2 hours behind schedule, I am grateful for life, security, safety, and hope.

Thought Picnic: In time we travel in strange individuality

Using time for a purpose

Time is a journey that we traverse for which we know neither the length of it in the existence of things nor the sections that punctuate the start or the end of what defines a life.

Life is represented in birth, living, and death, events becoming milestones that govern the stories we get to tell. Indeed, I write a lot about telling stories, my own stories, the stories of interactions, and the stories that I narrate of my observations of others.

Relationships form a significant part of how these stories develop, some of these relationships thrive on nurturing with due consideration and others wither because selfish posturing pervades the context.

How it made you feel

Invariably, I curate my relationships in interesting ways. The ones in which I naturally belong that I did not initiate have suffered more because ties are generally of obligation rather than of interest. The influences from nativity into adolescence have laid a marker of unresolved trauma and consequences that leave one in a state of sad disinterest.

Yet, these are my roots, in need of understanding and exploration even as the outlook that becomes me suggests I am totally different from where I am supposed to have some affinity.

It is not what many may understand and there is a likelihood that some regret might greet the further passage of time for which I am wont to allow resignation than ruefulness. Emotions can be attached or detached, and this is within the model of feelings of direct or indirect abandonment that constitute the upbringing I enjoyed that others might recall differently.

With autonomy, you find your own posse in the partners and friends, acquaintances and networks, communities and involvements which are parts of your interests and give some purpose to living.

I will tell my own story

What no one can do is tell my story just because they are part of my story, they can choose to forget what I remember vividly or even misremember the details of how I was affected. It is not a gift many possess to read the mind of another or sense the internal turmoil that is the reflection of a situation.

This is what makes us unique, consanguinity hardly affords similarity in looks, character, personality, experience, or life. Having the same source is hardly indicative of the direction of flow, we diverge from the moment we draw breath and travel these storied journeys until the last breath.

When the books are closed, an account is made that constitutes a tribute of sorts, where is fondness, there is much to mourn and the absence of which leaves us untouched to the point of being unconcerned and indifferent.

What we do for the dead is more for assuaging the conscience of the living for the dead can do nothing for themselves. In the end, what they have sown in life bears fruit as to how they are revered. What is cultivated poorly yields a poor harvest, where there is no work, whatever the result, that is what is there to see.

Thought Picnic: As humans, we all do fail and fall

In life and its passing

Life is a series, a series of stories that includes the living and dying, the alive and dead, the enjoying and the suffering, all of which become the mix of humanity that sometimes we seem to forget that what we see and go through is not the only or most significant issue in the broader context of the communities with which we exist.

I had a call as the weekend closed out that a mutual acquaintance slightly older than us had passed on. It was sad news and it also brought to our memories an event that is definitive and seminal to how we all viewed each other.

We all sometimes fall

Then, in our youth, he could exercise disgust and revulsion with sententious persuasion to demand stringent adjustments under the threat of exposure and banishment. I became the villain of the situation that involved passions that were attended to rather than worked against.

We went our separate ways, the picture in my mind of him captured in celluloid of that time, any updates coming through other conversations with my friend who kept contact all through, as they were classmates and to a degree, friends of a sort.

Later in life as we got established in our professions and careers, he met with challenging integrity issues wherein he was found wanting. We heard rumours but were unaware of the details until an Internet search revealed more than we expected.

For weakness and strength

We had a secret about him just as he had a secret about us, but we were not into trading these secrets to besmirch or adjure, nor did we think of standing in judgement. What we learnt from that discovery was we are all fallible, to a lesser or greater extent, we might face a different range of consequences from just personal conviction to judicial conviction. We having endured the guilt and shame of the former.

Whether that secret died with him or was shared with someone, we cannot tell. Not that we are afraid that a revelation might lead to the loss of face even as amid our regret and sorrow at his demise, the lesser of our better nature might have felt relief at one less person with a secret.

Another Internet search gave us a bit more background to the man as we reminisced about the good, the abilities, the successes, and the life of the man. For how we have been impacted and influenced by the many we encounter, we can be grateful for having others share in our stories.

May his gentle soul rest in peace.

Thought Picnic: Weeping for ourselves and others

Time is short

Ephemeral is the thought that creeps into the mind, the wonder about our existence that exists in a timeframe measurable and quantifiable, sometimes short and then for some quite long, that we are caught at the end in a kind of celebration of life like an account closed at the end of many transactions.

For those who have a faith, the belief of an existence beyond this temporal realm. We find that we battle between mortal morbidity and a hopeful eternity. The thought that this phase of enlivenment is the preparation for a timeless future that boggles the mind.

We never knew

The receipt of access to this bliss of promise that begins from herein provides the assurance that whenever we depart, the limitations of the senses pass away for the unlimited expanse of spiritual incredulity that the imagination cannot begin to fathom.

Though we have heard from scripture the phrase “the weeping and gnashing of teeth”, which is considered in the frame of reference of punishment, it was surprising to me when an inference was made to this emotional activity being found in paradise.

The realisation that we never fully understood the promise of heaven on earth, that regret and sorrow will require even the encompassing loving godly miracle from the Father of comfort and succouring for us to enter the grace into which we were called before the beginning of the world.

In Christ alone

For one, for the little and the plenty, for each day that is both eventful and seems without event, for each breath that one takes in sustaining life is a sense of gratitude and thankfulness.

For whenever our storied experience on this terrain ends, we might have lived knowing that we might not be worthy of anything but are still counted worthy of everything that was sacrificed. Not of what we have done, but out of what was done for us.

John Coll: Calling on Herbert Dzinotyiweyi to fulfil his wishes

How we learnt of it

9 years ago, a very dear friend, John Alexander Coll passed on, unfortunately, many of us who knew him did not learn of his passing until almost a month after he had gone. The executor John chose to manage his estate and contacted me late on the 21^st of January 2015 and expected a response from me by the 23^rd of January 2015 for the funeral planned for the 30^th of January 2015.

This presented a difficulty for many who would have liked to attend John’s funeral, we found a circle of friends and eventually were able to have someone in London represent those of us who would have had to travel from afar to honour this amazing man.

The executor of John’s estate

Sadly, 9 years on, John’s estate and issues have not been resolved as he had intended, his executor Herbert Dzinotyiweyi who used to handle the accounts for the company Connection Software that John founded through the years gave everyone the impression that the estate was a very complex and tax intensive issue, it probably was.

Herbert Dzinotyiweyi who for a while lived in the UK also has Zimbabwe roots and seems to have ensconced himself beyond the reach of scrutiny of his fiduciary obligations to the beneficiaries of John’s estate.

It was in early 2019 that I acquired details of John’s will and the probate that had 10 beneficiaries once the core of the estate had been liquidated, yielding almost £800,000 which if it were judiciously divided amongst those to whom John bequeathed a largesse would have been consequential and life-changing for each of them, most located in Zimbabwe where he once had interests and in South Africa.

Our engagement with Herbert Dzinotyiweyi

I was able to gather all the beneficiaries in conference a few times in 2019 into 2020, some of whom at the time that I contacted them were unaware that John Coll had made a generous bequest to their names.

We did Herbert Dzinotyiweyi to attend some of those conferences from the safety of Zimbabwe, at which no determination was gained or made until he removed himself from the conference groups as if he had no further obligations as executor. Suspicions arose that a professional forensic analysis of the moneys accrued from the estate after probate determined that money had gone, it had not gone to any of John Coll’s intended beneficiaries.

Just account for the estate

Whilst I do not intend to impugn Herbert Dzinotyiweyi’s name, some questions need answering; an explanation as to why John’s estate that made probate in June 2015 has still not been afforded the wishes of the testator, and there is a possible dereliction of responsibility as executor that might border on criminal enterprise, but this is not to accuse anyone.

A dead man cannot fight for his good intentions and wishes, which is why they trust someone or people to administer their estate when they are gone. The fact that John’s registered will was made and witnessed just 5 days before he passed on might have limited the scope of persons to elect as executors of his will. He cannot have thought that the person he selected would not expeditiously manage his estate and adhere fully to his generous desires, 9 years on.

Pattern or sheer coincidence?

I know this is not what John intended and I can only hope that action and justice for what John Coll desired is finalised by the time of the 10^th anniversary of his passing and Herbert Dzinotyiweyi willingly accounts for his superintending of John Alexander Coll’s estate as executor.

The friends of John Coll who remember him fondly as an extraordinary person of consequence in innumerable ways will continue to agitate for the full realisation of his wishes. The matter is not closed by any stretch of the imagination. May John Coll continue to rest in peace.

NB: I am not a beneficiary of John’s will, I am a friend of John’s, we met in mid-1994. Obviously, I will review and edit this blog once all of John’s wishes are fulfilled as he intended.

Meanwhile, a quick search for Herbert Dzinotyiweyi would suggest he has run into some trouble. One cannot speculate on pattern or behaviour, but it is an interesting development to discover today. [ZimNow: Harare man in court over residential stand scam]

Blog - John Coll: Friend, Mentor, Gentleman (January 2015)

World AIDS Day - 2023

So many friends I lost

I have lost many friends to HIV/AIDS, the first person I met who had HIV and was released from prison in France on compassionate grounds was trying to write his story with no idea of what time he had left. I had gone to help him out, on his computer; he passed on in late 1991.

Another was an opera buff, full of life, an exciting conversationalist with a predilection to a certain type. A very good friend that I had known for just over 3 years. When we gathered for his 37^th birthday, it was both a joyful party celebrating his survival and a sombre meeting that suggested we might not have another. A few months later, he had a two-page spread of a tribute-cum-obituary in the Guardian in 1994.

I guess from the late 1990s, people were not as scared of HIV, and medications were coming on-stream to deal with the worst vestiges of HIV or the progression into AIDS if the issues were attended to promptly.

Change and change together

In 2000, I emigrated to the Netherlands, and I also met many people who were living with HIV all around Europe. They seem to keep a low profile when they fell ill, and then they returned to the scene usually to tell of their ordeal and their escape from tragedy.

Also, especially with young men, some on receiving a diagnosis literally gave up and were ready to end their lives. I found myself in the role of someone who gave a new perspective to things that it was an opportunity to consider a new lease of life that makes a difference for themselves and others. Many of them are thriving and are thankfully still with us today.

When in September 2002, I received an HIV+ result, I vacillated between a fatalistic view of things and a progressively positive perspective. I had determined it would not be the cause of my demise much as I did not attend to the issues that might arise.

I sought a miraculous touch

I probably wanted something miraculous than consequential medical intervention. I attribute that sense to the kind of religious beliefs I had mostly been exposed to.

To that end, as my health began to deteriorate with the advent of AIDS in the time from mid-2008 onwards, I felt I was still doing fine until what presented as athlete’s foot was determined to be an aggressive skin cancer, kaposi’s sarcoma. Now, that was life-threatening, and in September 2009 I came upon the full diagnosis that was treatable if I responded to the treatment or in the words of my consultant, I probably had only 5 weeks to live.

My response to the treatment from medical observation was by its rapidity from arresting AIDS, clearing up the skin lesions and fungating tumours, and bringing my viral load to undetectable levels, miraculous. My body was saved, but everything else lost, that I had to start all over again.

What works, works well

In that time, I lost other good friends who had HIV to other attendant ailments that might or may not have been related to HIV.

I am fortunate and grateful, and the antiretroviral medication works for me, I have been on the same regimen for over 13 years with no need or inclination to change it for anything else. My biannual checkups keep a view on all the internal and organ functions allowing my medical team to address issues with alacrity.

Obviously, there is the issue of stigma usually borne of fear and ignorance, you still need to be careful who you reveal your status to, especially where you are not aware of their understanding of developments and messages that now attend to the living with HIV.

My thoughts on World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day for me is a day of recognition and remembrance; the many amazing lives lost in their prime, the stories that did not get told, and the suffering that happened in the private and public compounded by prejudice and discrimination. The triumph of humanity over adversity and the celebration of life beyond infirmity and tragedy.

Most of all, it is one of possibilities; HIV is not a death sentence, it is the beginning of the answer to the question about living a fulfilling, glorious, and impactful life. For that, I want to tell stories, even better stories, and the best stories that Brian and I can write and tell together.

World AIDS Day – To life and living well.

A passage to the Great Beyond

In passing of passage

I woke up this morning to the news that an old friend of ours from the distant past of our school days in the 1980s had passed on earlier this morning. For someone who is generally not absent of words or expression to address any occasion, I found myself speechless and lacking in any inspiration of how to convey my sympathies.

Obviously, I am very saddened by this news, he as an artist and creative belonged to the set of friends I made in school that I have maintained some sort of connection with, usually bolstered by relations with whom I have shared the same school experience.

The ties that bound

Academically, it was probably one of the most accomplished of his peers just as many significant relationships in his life had been greeted with adversity and tragedy. It was out of the blue that I got a call from him, a few years ago, it was a good conversation of reminiscing with this soft-spoken demeanour. We always called him by his surname, if ever, we could remember his first name, at all.

I am aware through my relations that when they communicated with him, he always asked after me. In many ways, I have been blessed by people and many I have lost contact with that keep me in mind, in consideration, and in prayer, I am grateful for the encounters that brought us together.

A circle in shrinkage

As I do not make friends that easily and have by circumstance found myself with a finite circle of friends and acquaintances, the loss of anyone is great and impactful. It also brings to the fore our fleeting existence, the shortness of time in life we have to be consequential to ourselves and others, the ways in which we might be remembered and what legacy we leave behind.

I recognise that I have not been close enough to him to pick up the phone to condole his survivors, I hope to find that expression through others who maintained communication through the times until the end. In my heart and in my soul, I bless his memory, may his gentle soul rest in peace, and may God give strength, fortitude, and consolation to his survivors through this difficult time. God have mercy on us all. Amen!

Thought Picnic: A famine unfolding

 Something on nothing

Famine is a spirit,
A cruelty on living nature,
Like creation walking back,
From the sixth day to the first,
The skies stand closed,
The clouds bereft of spirit,
People look up and cry,
Succour is a distant memory,
The faint are really fainted,
The weak weakened still,
Death hovers over land,
Harvesting souls to misery,
The grass is totally parched,
Water is the stuff of dreams,
The world begins to shrink,
As girth absconds for gaunt,
All countenance is fallen,
No smiles visit the face,
The hope for tomorrow,
Is surrendered for survival,
A fast is already imposed,
From the situation of lack,
The people cry with prayers,
When shall the rain duly come,
For grain to take forth life,
And beast grazed the land,
Bellies filled with plenty,
Laughter is cacophony loved,
Things find a new normal,
People gain verve and purpose
To write of famine past.

Pope Benedict XVI - A man in a modern-day pyramid

As man is storied

Pope Benedict XVI was a man that represented the frailty of our humanity, for all flesh shall perish. That is nature as it has been from long before we recorded history I note that Roman Catholic Church is the longest continuously running political and religious organisation, what she documents in her archives, some unsearchable of the mysteries of our human race would intrigue those who eventually have liberal access to those libraries.

When Pope Benedict XVI took the papacy at the end of the long reign of Pope John Paul II, much as he was highly influential as the Dean of the College of Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was also an old man of 78 and for almost 8 years he bore the burden of his ministry with the strength he could muster and the weaknesses that plagued him in the many domains where he wielded influence from within himself to the broader church and global political organisation he led.

As man is frail

When he decided he could no do more, he resigned from the papacy and took on the title of Pope Emeritus sequestering himself at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens as Pope Francis succeeded him at the age of 76 and he presided over the solemn funeral mass of his predecessor, also now a frail man of 86 years of age.

Of men of advanced years, there was every possibility that the current pope could predecease the man he succeeded, my cultural heritage of the Yoruba celebrates the lives of people who live to a great old age at death, even as congratulations are offered to those who survived them. Our mortality is ever present in the course of our existence.

The concerns that a pope in retirement would inadvertently interfere with the organisation of his successor were not borne out. Pope Benedict XVI devoted himself to writing, studying, and prayer with the occasional snippets of news about him, what he was up to and his health condition.

As man is mortal

In his death, at the age of 95 on New Year’s Eve into 2023, there became how to celebrate a cardinal and a pope, as he was not the Sovereign of the Vatican City, apart from officials attending from Italy where the Vatican is situated and Germany, where he was from, any other country representatives would have attended in a personal capacity.

For the wealth and influence of the man and his standing, along with the offices he held, “As per tradition, the Pope Emeritus' pallium, coins and medals minted during his pontificate, as well as a "Rogito" or Deed summarizing the highlights of his papacy, were also placed inside the casket. He was buried in a triple coffin of caskets of cypress wood, zinc, and oak. [Vatican News: Deed of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI placed in casket]

As man is mummified

The zinc casket is welded shut with seals and a plaque, but for the man who ruled over men, they see no corruption for they neither return to dust nor are given to ashes, they become mummies of posterity, an eternal reliquary of bones with hair and leathered skin.

It makes one wonder if the crypts of royalty or the papacy very much like the pyramids of the Pharaohs might be discovered millennia from the present time will reveal to that civilisation once again the treasures of antiquity exemplified in the lives of significant persons of our times only for them to be plundered in the name of archaeology for the new museums that as human beings we visit to gawp at artefacts with intrigue.

As I watch a replay of the funeral Mass, the solemnity with the obscurity of Latin clouds the ceremony with mystery and awe. Pope Francis was wheeled in on the chair, and we all at another funeral find that moment to reflect that the times of man are just for a season. The celebration of our lives is informed by how we lived and for all that we might have done, our stories are buried in a summary and our graves have the briefest of inscriptions; our names, the year of our coming and the year of our passing.

Blog - Academic theologians creating Islamic disquiet

As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. Psalm 103:15-16 (NKJV)

Remembering my stepmother

 A propinquity nativity

It is a case of interesting provenance for another word cannot be found to describe the fact that my stepmother was only 14 months older than I am. Sadly, today, one speaks in the past tense because today would have been her birthday and she passed on, 4 days after her birthday 2 years ago.

On reflection, I consider the perspectives of relationships and the understanding of what goes on between different people. For there are viewpoints of who she was that my half-brothers whose ages would have been representative of my sons have, and that of who the larger parts of the family have as concerns her.

Deference of association

In my case, I find myself more of a neutral party as I never met her, I only knew of her, and we were introduced over the phone by my father long into their relationship. I immediately adopted a respectful deportment to my father’s wife and accorded her all that it necessitates.

Our interactions over the years that we communicated were cordial and friendly, each deferential to the other even as I fielded concerns and complaints whilst trying to mitigate and ameliorate issues as that relationship became estranged.

In my view, I thought there were situations where my father could have been more gentlemanly, yet I was never conversant with the intricacies of their affair. The history and reports relayed to me would suggest it was a stormy and sometimes unhappy marriage, but I was too distant from the setup to give it any assessment.

In resignation to fate

Therefore, regardless of what others thought of her, I could not fault her even if she had many faults, what I remember was trying to call her on her last birthday and we eventually talked. The call that received on that fateful Wednesday morning from my brother, left me in shock, I was coming to the end of my walking exercise, and I literally collapsed on a bench for a while to get my bearings.

Conversing with my brothers, we worked at facilitating her obsequies as I thought about how our then-recent engagements might have unwittingly been loaded with some premonition; certain critical responsibilities would come my way just as a matter of course and in recognition of the limits to which other parental obligations can be met.

The sadness is palpable in remembrance, more so for my brothers who would surely miss her and her presence for significant life occasions. Life is fleeting, how we leave legacy matters, and for those we have met, we hope we have contributed something significant and positive for them to remember. To my stepmother, rest eternal and may your shortcomings be forgiven.

Blog - A chapter closed suddenly

Thought Picnic: We are at peak mourning

Alright, here we are

The British expression of the veneration for the dead is quite fascinating to watch, for in the 8 days since the passing of Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II, the pomp, pageantry, ceremony, and performance that has greeting this period of mourning before her funeral has plumbed excesses rarely seen anywhere.

If the Queen were a Roman Catholic, she would be well on her way to beatification long before she has been interred. We are suffocated with coverage that could abandon common sense for sheer mass hysteria and uncontrolled genuflection.

Indeed, there is more grief for the immediate family of the Queen, and for the nation, is the realisation that a lady who has defined a major part of our national life is no longer with us. For her service and duty, we gather to pay our respects and honour her.

What I well see

Having great influences of another culture in my upbringing, a death at 96 is not considered sorrowful, rather a celebration of first a long life and then congratulations to their survivors for outliving their parents. I find myself at confluence and conflict as both my British and Nigerian influences wrestle with the spectacle that greets me.

At one time, I did think of travelling down to London for the laying-in-state, but after reviewing the rules and the prospect of being in interminably long queues for the prospect of a fleeting moment of bowing before a laden catafalque, I advised myself of the better participation in witnessing the civil and religious royal proclamations, along with signing the book of condolence at Manchester Cathedral.

For the living to be

I never had the occasion to meet the Queen, not that it was ever an ambition or desire, except for others who might if the situation presented itself would celebrate it. If perchance, one did meet with royalty, maybe there would be some interaction and conversation that in this case is absent from the dead, except if one were to indulge in necromancy.

My counsel informs that this performative exercise in public grief is hardly a front seat row and more an acquiescence of the establishment to gauge the popularity of the institutions that undergird it, as there is an enumerator somewhere seeking to use the numbers to convey a point.

To king I vow

All this does not make me any less a monarchist, I am quite comfortable with the unimaginative consistency of a hereditary constitutional monarchy that puts the excesses of political chicanery in check as much as it can without interfering with the system, than to radically change the system to a republic. What we need is a reform of our voting system to be more representative of the electorate and the less use of patronage to pack the House of Lords full of chums, plutocrats, and influence peddlers.

The gift of television gives a wider view and where opinion is grating, I can mute the volume.  As for the new royal household, it is a work in progress and all the preparations for this event are still left to some cack-handed courtiers who by trying to maintain intrigue and mystique almost always leave the royals caught rather flatfooted. Before I put pen to paper to reveal character flaws that were once rumoured of.

Keith Shearer - The memories

Meeting at a pub

After Boris Johnson’s last address as Prime Minister in front of 10 Downing Street, I was clicking through a few things as you do online before I in the confluence of many thoughts decided to search for ‘Keith Shearer Architect’ on Google.

I went out with Keith in 1991; we met at The Prince Regent on Liverpool Road in Islington, one Sunday afternoon around Easter, I could not account for what brought him up there from South London where he lived. I was housesitting for a friend who had gone to Mexico on a street off Caledonian Road, so this pub was my local even without much event.

Until I met Keith there, I never struck up a conversation with anyone, I guess I was just seen as someone who came in, ordered a drink, and sat in a corner until the closing hours. Then Keith came to say hello, we struck up a conversation and he invited me over to his place.

A friendship becomes

Later that evening, he brought me back home where I was housesitting and after he left, I noticed that he had secreted a £20 note under a book on the table. This was when I was still looking for work and trying to stick to roles in computing rather than doing something else.

After that, we met up a few times, I was invited to a party with his friends and soon we became an item, and I moved in with him on Christchurch Road in Tulse Hill. Our domestic arrangements were easy, as he had a lodger who just could not be kicked out of the kitchen for the want of trying.

Keith was an architect with a firm in North London and he quite daringly in my view rode a bicycle to work when cycling on the main roads in London was not fashionable and quite desperately unsafe.

Tremendously talented

He was also a polyglot, he had such an ear for languages, I was just fascinated in not only his ability to speak languages but to write in Arabic, Cyrillic, and Japanese kanji. I have now read that he spoke Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Italian and Serbo-Croat. I believe he spoke many more languages and one afternoon he bought a Yoruba language book and started making sentences, he was that gifted.

When I eventually found a job, Keith helped me with all the formalities in getting references from Lagos and all the preparations I needed to start before I found my own accommodation, including the move to my new place. I guess from then we began to drift apart.

6 years later, I returned to live in London from Ipswich and basically had an apartment on the next road from where he lived. We met up a few times and after 2 years in London, I was back in Ipswich and then in the Netherlands for over a decade. We did not keep in touch.

The memories to remember

However, Keith brought me new experiences because I attended my first gay pride with him, learnt more about gay history from him, and my first encounter with someone living with AIDS was a friend of his who had returned from France to spend his last days, desperately trying to write his story for which he needed some computing support, which I provided.

In many ways, I was naïve, not too understanding of the dynamics of gay relationships and was left to my devices most of the time. When I returned to the UK, I did try to contact him again, but my Internet searches indicated he had moved out of London.

The unexpected discovery I made this morning was that Keith had passed on in May 2021 at the age of 65. That was quite a shock, he had suffered a heart attack and I would have said Keith was one of the fittest men around and definitely of his peers too. It is sad news, but I remember Keith for his sense of fun, his tremendous help that was needed for me to settle down in the UK, his desire to try new things and his easy speaking voice that concealed a bundle of talent and ability.

May his soul rest in peace. James Keith Shearer, 1955 – 2021.

Thought Picnic: Realising there is more to do

I am tired

As I walked to the restaurant to retrieve part of the incomplete order that I discovered after returning home yesterday, I had a feeling wash over me in thoughts I strive not to entertain when they visit in moments that are not as good as they can be.

I am tired, it tells me, as weariness and fatigue creep in, like I have done all I need to do, and I am ready to rest from all of it. For, after all, the bother is rarely and never that of the departed but of those that remain.

To matter or not at all

Earlier in the day, I read of a farmer whose coffin-bearing hearse was driven past the farm he once owned to see his cows for the last time. I wondered, to whose particular benefit that was apart from the performative gesture that could be as emotional as it could be totally meaningless.

Then as I pondered on this and the fact that that there is much to live for, a lady walks into the restaurant to first thank the waiter for his kindness towards her sister some months before as she fell ill, that sister sadly has been in hospital for weeks with a yet to be confirmed cancer diagnosis. The lady was somewhat resigned to the situation as she was invited for a discussion with her sister’s consultant who was not a bearer of good news.

As beacons of hope

I found myself comforting the lady as she began to cry, the concern for her sister all too evident and the feeling that they are alone in this ordeal. Indeed, she needed some space and time to come to terms with what was ahead and also gather the kind of strength and support to give her sister in this very impossibly difficult time.

Then I, an example of a cancer survivor cannot afford to be tired when there are people to comfort and encourage as they walk through essentially their own valleys of the shadow of death or have to face death itself. We cannot then give up in ourselves where we can give some sense of hope beyond despair. We do not exist for ourselves alone and with that in mind, we need to hold firm and face what is ahead to get through to the other end.

Exhausted as I feel attending to issues for myself and others who at times feel we draw from inexhaustible reserves of resolve and determination even when we absorb what should be batted away. I guess I just need some time to be human and vulnerable, as it is a part of living or otherwise.

Not acting on what is remembered of them

We see only the good

Through affinity and familiarity, we acquire the kind of subjectivity that blinds us to certain characteristics of personality and integrity. The people we seem to know by whom we have determined they can do no wrong, we hoist them on plinths of adoration, unimpeachable and perfect despite their flaws being evident to others.

The searing truth of the character of our somewhat familiars escapes scrutiny and challenge, we are left totally unpersuaded of the truth and maybe that is necessary for the kind of relationships we need to maintain for the respect or the mystique the person presents to our opinions and adulation of them.

Speak the truth always

Yet, I am of the rare disposition of not speaking ill of the dead whilst not supporting false encomiums and epitaphs that suggest a life lived differently from the knowledge we have of such persons. The needful must be done, to bury the dead. However, to praise them beyond their lived human expression is to at once attend to falsehood and do them an injustice.

The evil men do remains the evil they have done, just as the good they have done is the good for which they should be lauded and appreciated.

Do well with all

In the many stories I have heard of people who have heretofore seemed worthy of praise because their deeds are concealed in the secrecy of acts that others remember them for, I have been astounded.

All I can say is that for all that they might have done wrong, we should find it in our better selves not to act as they have done to us and so become like them, but to rise to a standard for which we might be found good, faultless, and exemplary.

The sands of time will always archive the record and in the way we have been made to feel, by those who have contemned us, if we cannot forget, we can attempt to forgive.

October is full of life stories

A month of aspects

For decades, October was a month of many celebrations in my family, one of many births and the blessings that have been bestowed on us. We counted the days from the first week to the last of the month the most commemorative days ensconced in the 20s.

The patriarch, sisters, a brother, an aunt, a brother-in law, a niece, a nephew, a marriage, many friends makes October a rather crowded month of best wishes and congratulations that is until 5 years ago when plunked in the middle of the third week our baby sister passed on, then 10 days after the fourth anniversary of her passing, my stepmother passed on suddenly just 4 days after her 55^th birthday.

Life is the story of everything

The shock of these events sometimes makes October seem a stranger than comfortable month, yet births and deaths can happen at any time of the year. That October gave dates to these aspects of sorrow is just part of the story of life and it has lent dates to births and the beginnings of new life.

Rather than make October a month of sorrow, we reflect sombrely on our experiences cherishing with fondness the memory of those we loved who have become of the dearly departed, living to ensure that the lives they lived will not be forgotten. Finding perspective in it all is to know that they were consequential and impactful, without them we would be less fulfilled than we are.

God rest them well and we receive the grace to always do them proud for their absence does not make them any less significant and maybe we be able to build on the legacies they bequeathed us by their giving us some of their humanity when they tarried.

Feyike: 5 years on and the memories

My kidulthood was over

You were the reason mummy called me into her bedroom one late evening to have our first adult conversation, she was probably in her second trimester with you when I, totally oblivious and that is strange having been schooled in noticing when girls get pregnant with the whitening of their eyes and their constant spitting, along with the morning sickness. Maybe it was the familiarity, for apart from my immediate sister, I had never really noticed when my mother was expecting, the babies just arrived after a few days away.

Anyway, the conversation went along the lines of, I am an older woman now, as she was just shy of 40 and I 17, exactly a month after her landmark year, well, our birthdays have always been a month apart in and out of leap years. Yes, an older woman having a baby, and this was unexpected, but we now have to pull together and recognise that some responsibilities would fall on us over time.

My deception was complete

Much as she felt that this information should be shared with me, I was not having the best adolescence, my first year at Lagos State College of Science and Technology was going to be an unmitigated disaster doing Chemical Engineering, my performance was woeful, it was not even good enough to be asked to repeat the class.

Meanwhile, I had pulled a switch to Yaba College of Technology (YabaTech for short) for Electrical Engineering where the faculty had to be given proof that I was still 16 when we had the admissions interview, the underlying issue that many would call unseriousness and was patently clinical depression, carried along into that stint, I just rarely understood why I was in a class, the new beginnings for mother and child too divergent for concern or consideration.

My situation was dire

What would a nursing mother do with a child who is supposed to be smart but cannot understand anything going on in his lectures? I had never used drugs, that was not the problem, I just had a fog in my head that I could not clear, that religion became the steadying rail for my mental health until things began to clear up was the background in which Feyike arrived.

That week in which Feyike was born was when I moved into the YabaTech hostels, I was a parents’ nightmare, for when my mother was in hospital I had stolen money out of the kitty in her wardrobe and then had to face an inquiry against the conviction that she put aside some money and it had somehow disappeared, indeed, I was a nightmare, everything I could do wrong, I did.

My behaviour was atrocious

For the hostel, I snagged that by writing to the accommodations department that I could not stay with my uncle, even my parents found a copy of that letter when I did not arrive home on time having been on the new students’ jaunt to Badagry and Cotonou. I guess I was excused serious punishment that my father was always ready to mete out when I explained the situation.

I did not attend Feyike’s naming ceremony and for that, I faced the full wrath of my father, this weedy kid against the brute force of an angry and menacing bully, I asked for it and I got a lot, I never escaped being a child. Some encounters with my father in those times have so defined the quality of our relationship since then.

My religion was unhelpful

As I was rarely home, I did not know much about the illness that put my baby sister in hospital many times, and sometimes for weeks. I returned home once to lift her and there must have a dislocation in her arm, we soothed her with lullabies and lulled her to sleep. Many times, I prayed fervent prayers for her healing, hoping for a miracle and much else, but there was a radical change in our family unit.

Medicine only seemed to provide temporary outcomes, my mother’s inclination was she was in deep spiritual warfare for the soul of her first son and the life of her last daughter, she found a prophet that had some answers to whatever ailed all of us and got stuck in. My father with all pretensions of rationality hated religion even if he did the basic church attendance and community group activities, he could be persuaded to do the full fetish rituals, which had the accoutrements of the macabre. I saw a lot and said very little.

My knowledge was deficient

Invariably, I never knew how ill our Feyike became over the years for most of the time I visited home, she was in remission from another hospital visit or bout of illness, everything I know I have learnt mostly after the fact.

When I was told that she had fallen very ill some years before her passing, I made enquiries through some doctor friends of mine on Twitter, they found the medical notes and history that for her apparently chronic illness she had not been adherent to her medical regimes.

Probably, a trait in our family, we hate medical regimes, it took a medical emergency for me to face up to the reality of my own situation, and now, I have been on at least 3 pills a day for over 12 years. It is just part of my life.

My mourning was early

She had end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis thrice-weekly dialysis and consequently needed a kidney transplant for hers had stopped functioning. I saw a medical abyss ahead, and began to mourn, long before we knew much more, the system in Nigeria, I did not think could sustain her dire medical needs and my sisters put everything they had into trying to keep her alive.

We were somewhat in a losing battle, and towards the end, Feyike herself was donating money raised for her own treatment to others. On the morning of the 18^th of October 2016, my middle sister called, Feyike had left us.

My sister was my daughter

The way our story was intertwined seems to be much more around what I was going through than what her own experiences were because I had left home in the second year of her childhood and everything else I know of her is through conversation than observation. Yet, she to me felt more like a daughter than a sister, she would have been the sole beneficiary of my estate, it was her name on the life insurance policy I took out when I bought my apartment in the Netherlands in 2001.

Maybe, I was something like an absent father, one she knew was somewhere out there in the periphery, not intruding but interested, I cannot tell. I know I miss the snatches of conversation we used to have, the hopes and dreams that seeped into the ever-present sense of hopelessness that something might just change for the better.

She lived her life and when she died, it was a great release from lifelong suffering and disease, a baby, a girl, a lady, a woman, a person who touched our lives in immeasurable ways, some difficult to put in words, but time becomes a store of the fondest memories that can never be forgotten, recalled for sombre occasions like this.

 

Oluwafeyikewa, 4^th November 1982 – 18th October 2016.