SHOULD HE FORGIVE HIM?-How does a wicked father need his son in death?

How does a wicked father need his son in death?

Dear readers, our environment makes us who we are and there are some childhood happenings that we cannot let go.

Today’s writer is struggling with his past as it affects his decision in the present. He needs your help.

Please, read and advise him,

Thanks, Monica Taiwo.

Dear Taiwo,
Some situations and happenings are just incomprehensible. The worst however is that as bad as they are, even to the knowledge of people around you, they still force things on you in the name of religion or some silly culture.

I do not think that I am bad, neither am I without a heart, but situation around me is making me cynical.

I have a heart and the only person I love with all my heart is my mother; I will do anything for her and I have no apologies. In case my wife gets to read this, I hope she will forgive me. I don’t mean to insult her, but some things and people come first. So sorry darling, I know you will understand.

The story of my life is simple, but complex and this is the reason I decided to write you to seek counsel, and those of your readers so that I can use them as reference to those concerned. Whatever they are, I will take them as coming from neutral sources, though those who really know me and what I am going through will know this is the story of my life.

I grew up to know hatred and rejection at the hands of a man who is supposed to be my father. I don’t know why he hated my mother and I, later my younger sister that much. I was not too young or small to witness all what my mother suffered in the hands of my father, sometimes he would beat her up so much that she won’t be able to stand on her feet for days, she would be so sick that I used to pray in the corner of her room where I used to seat that she does not die.

On such days I didn’t go to school because there was nobody to take care or cook for me. My father was always away from home and I used to pray that he stayed away because whenever he came home it was one trouble after the other. He didn’t spare me too; I also got the beating of my life. I can remember, the day I tried to stop him from beating my mother. I was in primary two, and you know that there is a way children bond. I have a friend who had a similar background and he told me one of the times that we were sharing our experience that on one of the occasions that his father was beating his mother, he held on to one of his legs and bit him so hard that he bled.

I had no guts to do such, because even then, I had the feelings that my father was worse than his. On this particular day, I never knew my mother was pregnant and that she was bleeding because she had a miscarriage as a result of the beating. The moment I saw blood, I didn’t even wait to see where it was coming from or think twice before I grabbed my father’s leg and hit him. I received a beating which landed me too in the hospital with my mother. In fact, I still carry a scare from that day’s experience.

You won’t believe that my mother still went ahead and gave birth to another baby, after the miscarriage. Then, I couldn’t think of the implications but I was able to critically look at some things when I was older. I really wondered how she could have slept with my father after all she suffered in his hands. Women! Let us give it to them.

As if my father’s brutality was not enough, his family members were not better. Whenever any of them came around, they had no good news for my mother, especially his immediate younger sister who was my mother’s friend. I later learnt that my parents met each other through her. I thought she was supposed to be on my mother’s side but she was always against her. My grandmother too was not of help. In fact they all were always on my father’s side. The only person who always stood his ground was my father’s cousin. In fact he told my father outrightly, one day to let my mother leave if he did not want her instead of killing her.

I later learnt the reason for their quarrels; dad was a chronic womaniser, drunk and night crawler, who was never responsible to his household. Instead of taking care of us, he would even steal mum’s money and if she dared ask, she got the beating of her life.

My mother lost her parents when she was quite young and was raised by an aunt, who died not long after she got married, so there was practically no family to wade in. A friend of hers however insisted that she would leave my father after a bout of beating which landed her in the hospital again.

They were schoolmates.On one of her holidays to Nigeria because she was based abroad, she looked for my mother and saw her pathetic state. She quarreled with my aunt, because according to what I was able to pick from their conversation, my mother was already in a good relationship, before she met my father through her sister who convinced her to settle with him.

Unfortunately, her former boyfriend married another woman and he is doing well. Although we later learnt that his marriage too was not working out and through this friend of hers they came back together and got married again.

My mother had two other girls for him and he is the one I called ‘‘daddy’’ and in all sincerity remains my father, because despite opposition from his own family he took good care of us. I knew the meaning of happiness and joy of a father with him. He spared no expense at taking care of us. He treated my younger sister and I just like his own and I enjoy it so much whenever he calls me “my son”.

His other wife also had three girls. He really treated me like his son and till date I remain a lot to him. He gave me the best education, had my school years in the US, all of us studied abroad. I have a business in the US, and when we all left home, my mother moved into his home and to the glory of God, the two women, blended, although one cannot rule out tension once in a while.

Sometime in June last year, I received a call from an unregistered Nigerian number and discovered that my aunt was the caller. Her mission? My father needed me, he was critically ill and they needed money for treatment. I called daddy as soon as she dropped. He told me to do whatever I could to help. I got angry when I discovered that my mother was the one who gave her my number.

I eventually gave some money and even went to see him in the hospital when I came into the country. He was in a bad state, couldn’t even talk; he had stroke. The woman he married after my mother abandoned him when he fell ill. She also left with his money, cars and other valuables. Her two sons too had not surfaced at their father’s bedside since he was admitted

Since then, I had done a lot in the area of finance, I really do not mind as I have enough to give him. Unfortunately, he passed on two months ago; God rest his soul. His family members however want me to play a prominent role in his burial. I told them to go ahead and do what they had to do, but they are insisting that as the first son I have to call the shots and shoulder all the responsibility as it is the custom.

I asked few questions about their custom which allowed him to maltreat my mother and I without caution. A culture which gave his family members the right to rub salt into my mother’s wound. What if I had died? Who would they have called? At least, he had other sons. More over, at a stage, he asked that I stopped bearing his name and publicly rejected me and called me a bastard.

I brought all these on myself because I intervened when he was ill. If I had ignored their request for financial help they won’t have come back. I really can’t do what they are asking because it also comes with some traditional rites. The most annoying is the fact that my mother is joining hands with them and she is even enlisting daddy’s help to convince me. Can you imagine?

They have refused to bury him unless I make up my mind and I also maintain my stand. Some of them even have the guts to call me names. What fault of mine is, I don’t know? Please, am I a bad person? How do I get them off my neck?

Wilson.