On death and life

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born; just a change.”

This Chilean-American writer, Isabel Allende’s thought on death and life should offer everyone the right perspective while searching for the myth surrounding human mortality.

What is it in death over which one should mourn and lose sleep? Is death not human reality? Whoever breathes the air of this life is intrinsically indebted to death a second after his exit from mother’s womb. This goes to say it is a waste of energy to be scared of death over which you lack control to appeal or instruct it to go and return later. When it comes, end has come. Your heart stops beating.

Your brain stops thinking. Your eyes see nothing. Your ears hear no word. All your vital functions stop. You are still and stiff. Lifeless! You are not better than a log of long abandoned wood in the bush. What goes around you, you don’t know. All the wailings, the noise and gnashing of teeth are none of your business. If your bereaved family choses, they could bathe you with a litre of fuel, pick a stick of matches and set your body on fire; that’s not your business. It’s their headache watching you, their beloved, melted into the ashes. You no longer absorb pains and warmth.
<span;>You’re back to where you came from, according to the scriptures people, a claim, however, not going down well with scientific interrogations.

Above all, what is cardinal in this state is what you have lived your life for. That is, what you will be remembered for after you have lost the gas. I recently asked of whereabouts of a public figure, who was treated like a diety two decades back. Answer to the question further guided me about the ephemeral of human life. That chap is not dead, my source confirmed, but he is not figurally alive. He is off the radar; out of sight; no longer on pages of newspapers and magazines, not even on social media where lost souls reconnect. He’s probably alone in his compound, isolated and abandoned by his hangers-on who, when his sun was shining, were all over him only to massage his ego for their belly.

Conversely, one I refer to as my fatherly Principal and who called me “Tunde, my son”, Asiwaju Ajadi Badmus, lived a life that made him relevant to the public till few hours to his last breath on October 13, 2024.

News of his transition instantly drew a large number of sympathisers to his residences many hours before his remains arrived Osogbo via Ilorin Airport for the burial conducted at dusk. His life, love and legacy is explored in this issue you are holding in addition with testimonies of two governors of Osun State, one of whom characterises Badmus succinctly as “a man of truth”. Enjoy it!