A lady recently reveals lessons needed to be learnt from the story of how her late father passed on. She said;
“When my Late Father was admitted at the hospital, everyone was with him.
I mean everyone. Whoever comes back from a trip, will head straight to the hospital, who ever gets back from school would head straight to the hospital, we were the noisy family who are either getting chased out of the wards, or making the doctors and nurses laugh.
We can’t be at home when Papi was in the hospital and Shungy was by him… The house would be empty and dry… So that was the reason of us always going.
Sharing the ward with Papilo at the hospital was a man with same medical condition as my Dad, his name was Mike.
Whenever we were playing, joking with my Dad or singing those childhood songs he taught us, Mr Mike would be crying… Like weeping, then he would pick up his phone and call his children and start abusing them “you will suffer, you all left me to die here, which school are you? Come and see your mates here, God will punish you, your children would suffer you also”
I only saw the wife once, the rest times the nurses or one of us attends to him.
Few hours before my Papilo passed on, he asked me to transfer some money to the man, I told him when we get back from the scanning, unfortunately Papilo didn’t make it.
When I entered the ward to do the transfer to Mr Mike and pick up my father’s personal effects, he was Hoping to see my Dad and when I informed him that Papilo has crossed over, he was uncontrollable “Death you’re wicked, you’re jealous, you took this man away from this his lovely daughters, this golden family… ”
Most parents don’t understand that it takes more than paying of school fees, buying of Good clothes and feeding children to be parents.
You need to love, care and be emotionally available for your children.
Do you know your children? Do you know what makes them happy and sad? Do you know their favourite colours? Can your kids play with you? Do they confide in you? Do you know their best friends? Do you hang out with your kids or watch movies with them or carry family task together to create that bond?
Do you show and share love and emotions with your wife before your children? Some fathers maltreat their wives before the children and yet they expect that woman to still love them before the children.
You don’t even spent on your wife but expect her to be grateful and thankful that you pay school fees and provide for your home. Children learn and copy from their parents.
We grew up seeing our father covering up for our mothers lapses and mistakes from the extended family and showering her with love till he passed on. Many men always join their family to castigate their wives even in the presence of their children.
My late father can be held at Lagos and we in Delta and if you ask us same questions, we would give same answers.
We knew my father’s weaknesses, so you can’t blackmail my father.
We knew his business transactions, we use coded words, we knew who he did not want to see even with the person at home, we don’t have to call him on the phone, we just make a sign that if he’s by the road, looking at the way the curtain is hanging, he would know… There is a way we all ring the door bell, if you ring wrongly and it’s you, and by the time we ask and it’s one of us, we know that person is not alone.
During the funeral, it was my younger sister that wrote my father’s biography… Family members kept thinking we would come to them asking questions, but they were surprised at even the things we told them about their own family.
Papilo was a god to me.
My father wasn’t perfect but he succeeded in creating a standard we all looked out for in the friends we kept and the men we dated.
Papi raised the bar…
Whenever I talk with my Dad on phone near my friends, or they visit, they will say “I can’t joke with my father like this o, your Dad spent almost all his life abroad that is why he is different”
But no
Dad was from a polygamous home,
Mum was also from a polygamous home,
They live with different people all through their lives until they met and got married… They never experienced any family bond or love, they were both raised on survival!… But guess what?
They created and raised a different family, different from how they were raised… They raised their own kids on love… They gave us what they were not given.
You live with your wife/Husband like room mates, you live with your kids like enemies, your kids don’t know anything about you… Not your business, not your life, nothing, when your children hear you come in, they run to hide, you’re a terror, your children can’t have conversations or play with you… But you expect heaven on earth? You expect your children to love you and care for you in old age? They will do that as an obligation, not out of love.
You’ll be lonely in your old age when you don’t create that bond… They would never create time to visit you or be with you, they would abandon you when you need them around and at the event of death, they would give you a ‘befitting’ burial to appease their conscience.
Children are a reflection of their parents… Both the father and the mother.
I love easily,
I trust easily,
Little things make me happy,
I am compassionate,
I love humanitarian work,
I am crazy… And some other things…
All these I got from my parents.
If your children hate you,
If they abandon you,
If they prefer confiding in other people instead of you,
If they prefer helping a religious leader or an outsider instead of you…
Check yourself,
You were just a provider, you were never their parent… The bond is not there…
Raise your children on love, be emotionally available for them and your old age would be glorious.
The way you make your bed… So you lay on it.
Fathers, and mothers, connect to your Children!”
