Life and Death
Published: 9 October 2013 By Abiodun Giwa
Coffins prepared for the dead
"Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returned into the dust, of earth we make loam: and why of the loam, whereto he was converted," Shakespeare in Hamlet
Everyday that I wake up from sleep in the morning, I thank and praise God for sustaining me, because I hear how some people go to bed and they don’t wake up. It means they are dead. I know that it is not by my power that I am still alive, but by His grace. It was not that those who had died loved to die. And apart from dying, there are several ways that people die. Some die while they are sleep or after brief illness; some people get killed by others and some people die in accidents.
Virtually everyone wants to live and die in sleep at old age, but not all are so fortunate and it is not a curse.
Those who had been killed did not wish to be killed, and those who died in accidents would have wished it was not their portion. In this life, humans seem not to have a choice than to live and die as it is possible. Just like some are rich not because they are born to be rich, and just as some are poor and not that they are born to be poor. No one wants to be poor, just as no one wants to die. And die we must, and poverty cannot do without members, no matter how people struggle to escape it. Poverty, like wealth, seeks those it will bring to its fold. Some are doing everything humanly possible to run away from poverty.
When you are running away from poverty, whatever happens in the circumstance can only be imagined. Many of those who were killed at the Kenya’s Gateway Shopping Mall were workers who had chosen to work to escape poverty. The about 300 Africans who were caught in the web of a sunk boat on their way to Italy were running away from poverty at home. They least would have expected that the end of their journey would be the floor of a water bed. Those who died in a plane crash in Nigeria last week, when an aircraft with the remains of a former governor crashed, least expected it could be their last journey. Among them were an undertaker and his son, who had hoped to succeed his father, along with the biological son of one of the political patriarchs in Nigeria. Had not people said good of Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, who also was killed in Kenya?
People die everyday anyway. Death is universal; killing men, women, old, young and children and infants, proving the truth in the words of John Donne that when something else kills, it is attributed to death. Death has no respect of persons or positions. Whether you are rich or poor, you know that one day, you will have it. There is no one who has been born and who will not die. It is a debt owed that must be paid. The only difference is that the opportunity that is open to some people who live to be adults, and become leaders in their countries are not open to others less fortunate.
What matters in leadership is the good you may have done before your death. No one will remember the number of cars or mansions that you may have built with stolen or hard earned wealth. Today the world knows leaders who are morally bankrupt and corrupt, and the areas of the world they live and rule. The world knows leaders whose main preoccupation is how much wealth that belongs to their country that they can conscript into their family holdings. The world views and regards them as brigands in position of authority who lacking conscience.
We bring nothing into this world, and when we leave we will take nothing with us. We came naked. And we go scantily clad. When we were born, we moved the limbs and cried before the voice of congratulations. When we are dead, we are immobile, people will wail or will be careless in cases pertaining to adults who die, depending on what one had done before death.
Gabriel Ramos contributed and inspired this column during a chanced meeting last weekend in New York City; when he spoke about not believing in wealth and that we will take nothing with us from the earth. He reminded me about what the good book says in Timothy 1: 6-7 that "For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it."
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