WEDDING: EVEN A GHOST ATTENDED ONE
By Ugo Okeke
I have always hated the use of clichés in my writings but after this experience, I decided this is an exception. This real and true story is stranger than fiction.
I still remember with much trepidation this incident that took place over a year ago in the family of an extended relation. Actually, it was a wedding I stumbled on this fearsome tale.
My younger brother who stole a look at my title is already saying that I can sale my mother for the love of lucre. This is so because my relations made me promise not to tell the world knowing my pedigree as a writer and penchant for such. But after a year, I felt my readers deserve to read this true but strange happening in a wedding. You now know why I will not mention names here.
Now, the protagonist is my paternal aunty while the antagonist is her late husband.
This couple had left the shores of Nigeria in the wake of the 3 year Nigeria civil war where the Nigerian Government used the weapon of hunger to waste the lives of hundreds of thousands of Biafrans through the disease of kwashiorkor. Forgive me this slight digression down historical lane.
They traveled to London and took up resident permit and became British citizens after a couple of years in good old ever-cold London. My aunty was only 17years while the husband was 27 years old the time they wedded. His family according to the story had accepted to train him on one condition. And the condition was that he should get married to a good and well-trained home girl before he leave the country for a second degree in pediatrics.
Nobody heard anything unsavory about my aunty and her husband fro over twenty years. They were said to be sending money to relatives of whom my father was one of the biggest beneficiaries. In their thirty-fifth year, they came back to our town as the husband came from a community different from ours. There was much fanfare and celebration. That was when I was introduced to my aunty. But we noticed they came without their children. When we asked, my aunt’s husband prevaricated while my aunty made every effort to hide her discomfort, frustrations and deep-seethed anger over the topic. She kept eye-balling her husband.
I never knew any one of them except the photograph of my aunt of black and white background taken in her seventeenth birthday the week she left Nigeria for London with her husband.
Four year later, my aunty came back home at the age of 56 with a middle-aged man. She introduced him to the family after telling us that she had divorced her husband due to reasons she termed as irreconcilable difference and her frustrations with him for not doing much to help her have her own children through the artificial way. We felt sorry for her and bought her story. The new man in her life she told us is from Kenya. The customs of marriage were carried out within three days and they had a successful traditional wedding which was well-attended. For her second white wedding, she opted for a low key and private affair. Only family members were allowed.
Then came the 5th day of April 2006, we drove down to the biggest church on our community for the wedding. Everything went on well until the priest asked the routine question,
“Is there any one among you who have a reason this couple should not be joined together as husband and wife? Let such person speak up or forever remain silence.”
There was pin-drop silence among family members that were not up to twenty in the big church auditorium when we all heard,
“I have a reason.”
We all looked behind and saw nobody. But when my aunty looked back, she screamed,
“What are you doing here? You are dead!”
We were shocked by the evil revelation. We all took to our heels, the priest, and my aunt’s new husband inclusive when the ghost of my aunt’s late husband appeared at the altar and said…,
“She poisoned me to death so she can marry her lover of ten years because of my inability to father a child.” and disappeared.
When I looked back, my aunt was still lying where she had collapsed in an unconscious heap.
Today, she had gone back to London to live with her Kenyan husband and we heard they are expecting a baby.
For more, go to http://www.ugonoble.blogspot.com/
By Ugo Okeke
I have always hated the use of clichés in my writings but after this experience, I decided this is an exception. This real and true story is stranger than fiction.
I still remember with much trepidation this incident that took place over a year ago in the family of an extended relation. Actually, it was a wedding I stumbled on this fearsome tale.
My younger brother who stole a look at my title is already saying that I can sale my mother for the love of lucre. This is so because my relations made me promise not to tell the world knowing my pedigree as a writer and penchant for such. But after a year, I felt my readers deserve to read this true but strange happening in a wedding. You now know why I will not mention names here.
Now, the protagonist is my paternal aunty while the antagonist is her late husband.
This couple had left the shores of Nigeria in the wake of the 3 year Nigeria civil war where the Nigerian Government used the weapon of hunger to waste the lives of hundreds of thousands of Biafrans through the disease of kwashiorkor. Forgive me this slight digression down historical lane.
They traveled to London and took up resident permit and became British citizens after a couple of years in good old ever-cold London. My aunty was only 17years while the husband was 27 years old the time they wedded. His family according to the story had accepted to train him on one condition. And the condition was that he should get married to a good and well-trained home girl before he leave the country for a second degree in pediatrics.
Nobody heard anything unsavory about my aunty and her husband fro over twenty years. They were said to be sending money to relatives of whom my father was one of the biggest beneficiaries. In their thirty-fifth year, they came back to our town as the husband came from a community different from ours. There was much fanfare and celebration. That was when I was introduced to my aunty. But we noticed they came without their children. When we asked, my aunt’s husband prevaricated while my aunty made every effort to hide her discomfort, frustrations and deep-seethed anger over the topic. She kept eye-balling her husband.
I never knew any one of them except the photograph of my aunt of black and white background taken in her seventeenth birthday the week she left Nigeria for London with her husband.
Four year later, my aunty came back home at the age of 56 with a middle-aged man. She introduced him to the family after telling us that she had divorced her husband due to reasons she termed as irreconcilable difference and her frustrations with him for not doing much to help her have her own children through the artificial way. We felt sorry for her and bought her story. The new man in her life she told us is from Kenya. The customs of marriage were carried out within three days and they had a successful traditional wedding which was well-attended. For her second white wedding, she opted for a low key and private affair. Only family members were allowed.
Then came the 5th day of April 2006, we drove down to the biggest church on our community for the wedding. Everything went on well until the priest asked the routine question,
“Is there any one among you who have a reason this couple should not be joined together as husband and wife? Let such person speak up or forever remain silence.”
There was pin-drop silence among family members that were not up to twenty in the big church auditorium when we all heard,
“I have a reason.”
We all looked behind and saw nobody. But when my aunty looked back, she screamed,
“What are you doing here? You are dead!”
We were shocked by the evil revelation. We all took to our heels, the priest, and my aunt’s new husband inclusive when the ghost of my aunt’s late husband appeared at the altar and said…,
“She poisoned me to death so she can marry her lover of ten years because of my inability to father a child.” and disappeared.
When I looked back, my aunt was still lying where she had collapsed in an unconscious heap.
Today, she had gone back to London to live with her Kenyan husband and we heard they are expecting a baby.
For more, go to http://www.ugonoble.blogspot.com/
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2 comments:
come on! This is a fabricated story, right? Are you really telling me that you saw a ghost?
It actually happened.
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