My Life In One Year By Florence Ajimobi

Today, June 25, 2021 makes it exactly a year since Sen. Abiola Ajimobi’s death and his wife Florence Ajimobi has written a chronicle of how she has fared in one year since her husband’s death on her personal blog.

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Growing up as a child, my favourite game was “house” (a game where children act like members of their family). I would force my siblings to play and I, of course, demanded to be the mother or wife. That is how much I love the idea of having and holding a family. I dreamt of keeping my marriage my whole life.

When my heartthrob, Biola and I decided in 1980 that we were ready to get married after a very short friendship of 6 months, I was very excited. Believe me, we had the best relationship anyone could have asked God for in the 40 years that we were together.

Unfortunately, loss, heartbreak and death are no respecter of persons. We watch dreams die, see people leave, lose their careers and even lose their loved ones but we never really know how it feels until we experience it ourselves. God is deeply acquainted with loss, He knows the pain of being let down and rejected. He knows what abandonment feels like. Jesus was left all alone by the people He loved most in the hardest and most painful hour of His life. It doesn’t matter who is lost or what is lost, loss is loss and it hurts deeply. I know this because I have felt it.

On the 20th of May, 2020, Biola and I tested positive with COVID-19 and we started our isolation at our Ikoyi home together, taking our medications and doing all we were advised to do by the doctor.

On the 26th of May, we both went to bed together but early in the morning of the 27th, I had to rush him to the First Cardiology Consultant Hospital, in Ikoyi. You cannot even imagine my confusion because this husband of mine had never fallen this ill in our 40 years of marriage. Anyways, he got admitted and it became the beginning of my journey without him around me.

Oh! I prayed like I had never done in my entire life. I must at this point commend my children and their friends who prayed tirelessly during this period. It was a period filled with fear and hope for me. I believed God was going to answer my prayers and bring my husband back home, but alas, on Thursday, 25th June, 2020, loss came knocking on my door and my world stopped when I was told my other half had left me to be with our Maker.

Gosh! I was dazed, scared, confused and wondered how we got to this stage. That afternoon, I asked God why He didn’t take me as well? I was in a state of shock. I was in my daughter’s house (where I stayed throughout the period my husband was at the hospital) when I received the information. I ran out of the house and headed straight to the hospital with a glimmer of hope for a miracle. When I saw my beloved husband on the bed, my heart was shattered. It dawned on me that my world had actually come to an end as my own best friend and the one who gave me strength was dead. I just could not take it in. How? Why? These were questions I asked every minute but none could answer me, no one could help me, it seemed like I was going crazy.

I went back home from the hospital and the place was filled with friends and family who had come to sympathize but none of them knew what was going on inside me. I was too confused to understand what was happening around me. On Friday, plans began on how to take him to Ibadan, Oyo State to be buried. I left for Ibadan on Saturday filled with shame because I felt that God had abandoned me despite my “supposed” relationship with Him.

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My trauma began as I stepped into OUR HOME in Ibadan for the first time after the incident. I went into our bedroom, laid on his side of the bed and I cried out my heart, calling unto Biola and praying that all I was going through was just a dream. That night, sleep eluded me as I tossed and turned on the bed throughout the night. I opened all his side of our wardrobes and kept talking to myself – honestly, I felt I was going insane or believed I was to think he was dead.

On Sunday 28th, the children arrived with his body and he was laid to rest.

The grave was dug and my Biola was put in it. My heart stopped beating at that point and I wished everyone would just go away and let me die. It was a very traumatic day for me. I could not sleep that night, all I was picturing was how he was lowered into the grave and the reality that I would never see him again.

Next day, my children and I returned to Lagos and instead of going back to my daughter’s house, I went to our own home. You cannot imagine how I felt going back to that house without him. I went first into our room, laid on his side of the bed and I tried to recall the whole incident again. I was still asking “how did we get to the stage of you being dead?” This is one question I still haven’t received an answer for, and perhaps one that I will forever keep asking myself. Guests and sympathizers kept visiting and though he had been buried, I still wondered if really I was the one they were sympathizing with.

I lost the urge to live. I kept praying that God should just take me away to be with my soul-mate. Even the mandatory Islamic mourning period of 130 days (where I had to remain at home) made no difference to me. Where would I even go to without my husband?

There was no thrill in life again.

During this period, I had stopped praying to God. I told God I did not want His help anymore since He took the one person I cherished the most away. When pastors or my friends came to pray with me, I looked at them as time wasters. Sometimes, I was filled with hatred for them – why would they be talking about God who didn’t hear me when I prayed and cried unto Him to spare the life of Biola?

The loss of a loved one hurts, and learning to live with it is a long, difficult but necessary process. What I have learnt and can tell you for free is this; in our loss and grief, we can feel so alone and isolated, but God never leaves us when we hurt. He actually promised to be close to us and bandage us up in tough times.

Days ran into weeks and before I knew what was happening, it was 25th of July – a whole month without Biola, the love of my life. I think what was most painful for me is the fact that Biola and I never discussed death. All we ever talked about was how we were going to spend our retirement together. Never did the topic of death come up once. So, you can imagine my shock and disappointment when he suddenly left me.

Every day, I was dying slowly.

I was filled with so much sadness and pain that I went to bed every night praying not wake up in the morning. When I woke up next morning I asked myself, ‘you are up again?’ Then finally, the mandatory Islamic mourning period came to an end. My fear after the mourning period became how to start going out to face people, still carrying my load of shame and failure. By this time also the traffic of people in the house had reduced and my greatest trauma began when I started sleeping alone. Weeks became months and the woman who her husband complained that she sleeps too much couldn’t even sleep for 2 straight hours. What an irony.

My Biola was unique. Talking about him makes me happy and thinking about him gives my heart joy. To be honest, it is the only thing that has made me smile lately, besides my wonderful children, of course. After a while, I felt some sort of relief or so I thought until we had to celebrate the first ILEYA (an elaborate Islamic celebration) without him. ILEYA was normally a big celebration for us as a couple and family. I was hoping I’d wake up from the dream of him being dead and he would ask me for his new outfit for the celebration. It was not a dream. He was really gone and we had to celebrate without him. It did not feel the same. It would never feel the same without him. I cried bitterly on that day and went to his tomb asking him amidst tears why he left me?

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Those who knew my husband know that he loved me very much and he was never afraid to express it even in public. Sometimes when I tried to shy away from his public display of affection, he would tell me “you are my wife and not a girlfriend.” I miss his cuddle and kisses. I miss our gists and fights. Biola was a hopeless romantic. He gave me everything. I miss him so much that I never thought I could survive without him. Yes! My survival till now is still a mystery to me, but, hey, one year has passed and I am still here. One year has passed but the pain in my heart still feels like it all happened yesterday.

Florence Ajimobi is the wife of the Late Former Governor Abiola Ajimobi. This piece was published on her personal blog.