It was about a year from now that I lost my grandfather (Yaya Sani), this is a written piece about the interesting last month I spent with him while he was still alive, the experience of spending entire days and evenings with someone considered as the leader of a very old, ancestral family. It is a long read, close to ten pages long, and it gives a benevolent account of how one generation leaves behind the next. May Allah have mercy upon him and all the Muslims. Amin. 

Enjoy the story. 

My Grandfather’s Last Month To Live

The Room

My grandfather, known famously as “Dad” was a reserved and simple character, I won’t describe him as the quiet type though because he likes to chat away with his close ones, these are often his wife, brothers, grandsons, or his aged friends when they come to visit. I am his eldest grandson, and I was 26 when he passed away. 

The illness started like the usual bouts of illnesses that senior citizens suffer from, joint pains, swollen this swollen that, weakness, and so forth, but it never receded this time, it kept raging on and his health deteriorated quickly. We lived together in his house with a couple of my cousins and a few other family members, and we all saw his health decline before our very eyes. He could hardly move about, so a decision was made that I had to stay with Dad in his room while he got better. 

Before we were thrust at each other like that, our relationship was nothing phenomenal, I would spend the better part of the day in my room, usually writing, sleeping, watching a cartoon on my laptop, and just thinking, while Dad spends his day mostly doing old people stuff, watching the news, napping, entertaining guests, more napping, but my favourite part of his routine is when he strolls around the house very early in the morning and sometimes in the evening too, to see the chickens, pigeons, fruit plants, and at one point the fishes, that were scattered in cages and pens all over the big house. 

I would spy on him through my window veils and just marvel at how slow he takes the walks, I mean he could go faster but he stops to pick rocks, sticks, leaves, look at ants’ formations, and wonder if he should obliterate their homes if they are too near his or if he should just let them be, he always carries with him a long walking stick which is a very bulky wooden tree branch about three foot tall, that he got from one of the trees dotting the compound, he would lean on it and just look at the world around his house. 

In a maddeningly fast-paced world, I love taking time out to slow down and think, to look at the world around me and become one with the city, with nature, and simply, with life. For my grandfather, that is just ‘morning routine’. 

I don’t have an exact time of waking up to go say my greetings to him, but when I hear his door swung open (it has a loud creak) I take that as a clue to go greet him. I wasn’t consistent at first but became more so, especially during the latter part of his life because I was afraid he wouldn’t be feeling too well so I liked to check-up on him. He often has his breakfast ready on the table, which is a food flask of tuwo and a tray of tea stuff. 

Whenever you come to greet him he likes to put away his cutlery to shake your hand, and asks “an tashi lafiya?” Have you woken well? I usually eat my breakfast in my room, but on rare occasions, I sometimes bring the breakfast to eat in the sitting room with him, and we would watch Pink Panther together, laughing hard at the stupidity of our actors, sometimes though it’s Tom and Jerry. That reminds me of a time when we were kids and we never ceased to watch cartoons whenever we visited him and my grandmom, back then, I lived with my parents. 

My living and ‘un-living’ with Dad started something like this; about a year after I was born in Bauchi, Dad packed my parents to go live with them in Togo, where I was pampered and I lived like a king up until I was like five years old, then we moved back to Nigeria with my parents and I began this harsh life called reality, for starters, I was put in school, that was something I didn’t know I had to do. We lived in the capital city Abuja and after a few years of tugging it out with my very African parents, Dad moved to Abuja, that was when we would visit him and my grandmom almost every weekend, those visits would prove to be the respite I have needed all this while from my rigid and often authoritarian life, because we watched cartoons all day and night and there was no one to stop us (at their place). 

After his retirement, he moved back to Bauchi, and as fate would have it, about twenty years later, I moved back with Dad after I finished my secondary school. 

He wished he could spend more time with me and my cousins who are living in his house, but he says we are always busy with our phones, it is true. But occasionally he gets a kick out of my younger and smaller cousins when they come to visit him, brought along by their parents, a.k.a my uncles and aunties. He would sit the youngest one on his lap and would feed them his lunch or dinner. I remember he used to spoon-feed my younger brother Walid decades ago. 

While I was still recovering from the shock, that I had to live with Dad in his room, which meant I had to pack my things and leave the comfort of my own domain, I was praying internally that this all goes away, needless to say, it didn’t. And over the course of the one month before he finally passed on, we loved and understood each other in such a way that a lifetime of living together has not taught us to. 

I slept on the floor near the door while he slept on his therapeutic bed. I brought along my laptop, chargers, smartphone, and a few writing notebooks, to help me spend the night, and I try to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake the old man from his sleep because I usually stay up until about midnight, but I have to tell you it is hard to remember where you are when you are on your phone and on the internet. 

One time, I was randomly going through social media when I came upon a meme, I laughed out so hard I woke him from his slumber, then I realised where I was and pretended it wasn’t me that made a sound, he promptly got back to sleep. The meme was very funny, you know. 

Another time I was playing a mobile game called ‘Battle of Polytopia’, it is a strategy game, you move your players like chess pieces across a board, I did one amazingly daring move that annihilated my enemies on the game tile, which led me to let out a short high-pitched scream because of excitement, it sounded like “woooey!”. It woke the old man so much that he propped his body on his right elbow, looking straight at me, “I was playing a game” I said apologetically, he shook his head smiling and went back to bed. 

Our life in that room has been a journey of discovery, he forged a liking to my millennial quirks and I quickly adapted to his orderly lifestyle. Dad began to talk about me admiringly in front of everyone, he was quick to jump to my rescue when people are discussing how young people are slobs these days, he used to say “I will sell all the others in this house, but perhaps I will keep this one” referring to me, “He has his uses.” Mostly that involves changing lightbulbs. 

We would wake up for subhi prayers, sometimes he would be the one to wake me and sometimes I would be the one to wake him, and sometimes, we would both run late and will have to pray in the room. When he was healthy, I never remember him waking up late for subhi. He was always banging at our doors and windows on his way out to the mosque. But illness now confined him to his room. 

When I wake up in the mornings I will make sure I get Dad his medicines and anything he needs. I remember asking him if he was going to brush his teeth and he laughed generously, “What teeth?” he asked rhetorically, I had no idea he uses a mouthwash. When we are all done, I would simply take my leave, back to my room where I would sleep in or write, and continue on with the day’s activities, and wouldn’t return until later that night when Dad was about to retire for the night, I was like a professional nurse. But as time went on, I realised I was spending more and more time every morning in that room, our casual good mornings became long chats. 

Sometimes we talked about topics of his age when he was a young man, and sometimes we talked about my generation. But one of my favourite parts was when he told me stories about people in our family, because of his age and status in the family, he knows so much, and he begins to tell you these stories about your parents, uncles, grandparents and great grandparents that were embarrassing, funny, courageous, and sometimes romantic, it was like listening to fifty years worth of gossip. 

Talking about romantic, we once tried to define love and we both failed miserably at it, we just let the topic slide and continued with our life that day, I must have inherited my dense lack of romance from the man. 

During what became our regular morning chats Dad always mentioned my other (maternal) grandfather, they were really good friends, and he was the only one in the family he calls his elder brother, not just by age, but referring to him as his elder brother because of his character, he was such a good man, and he passed away ages ago when my mother was still very young, his name was Yaya Mukhtari, the same Mukhtar I was named after. 

After a while I effectively relocated to his room, picking out clothes for him and typing at his dressing mirror. Our friendship was blossoming but his health was not, eventually he had to be admitted into a hospital, where no one still knew what was wrong with him. 

Deciding on who was going to stay with him, once again, I was the obvious choice. 

At the hospital, they gave him blood transfusions and he showed signs of improvement, that about seven days later the doctor sent us home, but we have hardly returned when his situation got worse, and we had to return to the hospital. But despite everything, he was still his jovial slow self, smiling at his guests and shaking hands with people who greeted him. 

I became a precision instrument at the hospital, I categorized everything according to use, his drugs were in one place, toiletries in one, food items in one, etc. I will plan my write-ups ahead of time and type away when there are fewer people visiting, and I used to go out every night to order Indomie, it was during the month of Ramadan so there was no need for lunch. 

When I ordered my Indomie, which was at a small kiosk just outside of the hospital, I would come back to the room in case Dad needed something, then after some time, I would head back out to retrieve my order which by then is usually done. I loved that food dearly. 

The day at the hospital flew by quickly, with even guests kept to a minimum because of the covid crisis ravaging the country. Dad often slept a lot and when he was awake, he regaled me or whoever was there with stories from the past. He was infused with blood almost every day, that by the first or second week of our stay, he had gone through seven bags of O+ blood. 

I slept on the floor because the couch available was not comfortable at all. Even though the other bed was free (the room had two hospital beds), I refused to sleep atop it because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to wake up in case there was an emergency, I sleep deep you see. And despite my fears, it happened one time while I was cradled on the hard floor next to his bed. 

He called out to me in the middle of the night, but there was no response from me, he tried again and again, but same thing, no response, I was fast asleep, probably with my mouth hung open. He just wanted to go to the bathroom and he often needed some assistance to move across the room, he deftly got off the bed and luckily for me did not step on my head with his full weight backing him up, he couldn’t tell where I was exactly because it was dark. 

I only got wind of what was going on after some time when I heard movement in the bathroom, I promptly woke up and stood by the door to wait for him. I was alert like a guard on duty who let a house he was supposed to guard get robbed. He loved telling that story to his guests afterwards, that I was one lucky caretaker because he hadn’t stepped on me, “He would have known!” he used to say laughing. 

My Girlfriend

I guess it is time I introduce ‘my girlfriend’, according to Dad. It was a hilarious story. So one day, one of the nurses that attended to us in our ward came in, and she was a tall, fair young lady with a somewhat weird Hausa accent, you could tell she was not Hausa from the accent, but she spoke it well enough. 

As a rule, I try to say hello to the nurses every time they come in, and as per usual, I do the same with this nurse every time she comes in, nothing special, well until one morning that is. Dad’s IV line was swelling and he couldn’t bear the pain any longer, so I went off to the nurses station to complain to them about the IV line, and my fair maiden happened to be the one on duty. It was like 6 in the morning. 

When I told her she quickly grabbed her supplies and made her appearance in our room. She started prodding and poking at the swelled area before she began to disassemble the IV on his arm to put it on the other arm. I decided to ‘help out’ with the operation, during which we started talking. 

She told me how she wanted to study law but her family dissuaded her because of the cost, and now she is a medical nurse and enjoying every minute of it. She said something so profound about being a nurse. I think we were talking about different emergencies in a hospital when she said the best ward to work in is the maternity ward, that it feels so wonderful to see one person go in and two come out, she was gleeful while saying that. But she also said mortality in the maternity ward is the most difficult to come to terms with, because you often lose two at a time. She is affectionate, that much I have gathered. 

When the topic returned to emergencies, I told her how unafraid of blood I was and how I wanted to become a doctor when I was a kid, she marveled and asked why I dropped such a wonderful dream, I told her because “I fell in love with technology.” Those were my exact words, I went on to tell her about my freelance writing job and how I work online. There was a glint of interest in her eyes and she looked a little impressed. 

Almost throughout our chat, I spoke in English, because I realised she was more comfortable speaking in English, despite her Hausa being almost perfect. Sometimes our hands would brush, or she would tell me to hand her stuff, for which I comply. Dad just laid there, silent, a little unusual for him. 

Anyway, from then on I began to notice she comes to our room every chance she gets, supposedly to “check on Baba”, as she calls him. She was talkative and lively, and every time she bursts into the quiet room it suddenly becomes heightened with activity, and I try to say hi if she hasn’t beaten me to it. 

I never gave this thing we had any attention, nor ever thought that she was into me until one day when we met at the hospital lab, I was there on behalf of Dad, and we had a brief chat with her and for the first time ever she seemed a little shy, she kept averting her eyes while we spoke as if I was flirting with her, that was amusing since all we were talking about was blood samples and other disgusting things you talk about in a medical lab, not roses and flowers. It happened again on another occasion while I was returning from the shops in front of the hospital, we were walking towards each other and when she saw me she tripped! It was one of those tiny graceful trips where only some of your toes strike the ground and you lose a little balance.

But still, I wanted to laugh out loud so badly because I knew I was the cause of that, but I managed to maintain my cool, and I just said “Oh, so you are headed outside? See you then.” She blushed. Although I was not in the least interested, I became a tad bit self-conscious of my image around the girl nurse. I mentally checked my dressing, my beanie cap was casually laid back against my forehead and I had a t-shirt on that I had been wearing through most of my stay at the hospital. Not bad I guess, it was enough to make a girl trip. 

One fateful night, Dad’s brother was present with us, in fact, he usually comes around more than the others, and they chat with Dad endlessly despite Dad’s flailing strength, it was obvious he liked that brother of his very much. They would talk about everything, from the mundane to the important stuff. And that night, while they were in the middle of a conversation, I was sitting behind them on the other free bed when the door ‘burst’ open, and surprise surprise it was my crush the nurse. 

She was having what I can only describe as a very loud and very exaggerated conversation with a colleague of hers just outside the room while she held on to our door and hadn’t come in yet, I think she was buying time to gather her thoughts before making her final approach. When she finally made her entry into the room proper, she quickly greeted everyone around saying she just came to check something and that it was fine now, and she just randomly disappeared. 

The moment she set foot outside Dad’s brother began to complain about how “kids these days” behave, how they lack consideration for patients and are being loud in a hospital, yada yada yada. In my mind I playfully said “Yo chill, watch what you say to my girlfriend”, the thought hadn’t completely formed in my mind when Dad raised his hand which stopped his brother mid-sentence, I was curious as to what Dad was going to say, so I subconsciously propped my head closer, he said, and I am not joking, “Relax, she is Hafiz’s girlfriend.” A little laugh unexpectedly coughed out of me. We never talk about such things with Dad. 

His brother immediately understood her rash behaviour, and then they took turns teasing me. His brother would ask “Does he have her number?” And Dad would reply “Who knows” and laugh, the other would suggest “then he will probably follow her on Facebook”, and they would laugh together. The room around me grew tight, and I just concentrated on my game, but I couldn’t hide my grin. 

Dad told him the whole story, how she came in one day and how I helped her fix him up. That we talked non-stop standing over his bed, taji turanci kamar sarauniyar ingla ne ta haife shi “she heard English spoken to her like it was the Queen of England who gave birth to him” Dad told his brother, referring to when I was talking to the nurse in English. He said she had no choice but to fall for me after that. 

Dad has made hundreds of marriages happen in the family, it is so easy for him he can literally arrange one from his deathbed, so my worry was not unfounded. After everything that happened between us, I finally noticed something, I never learned her name. . . till date. 

Death

Ramadan quickly passed, and both I and Dad arranged for our sallah outfits to be brought to us even though we were not going out to pray or celebrate, but we were determined to look good in our hospital room. He sported a brown kaftaan with intricate designs at the front while I wore a blue native material, both of us with caps. 

He was cheerful the whole day and was happy with each visitor he had that day. For almost our entire stay, I became his head of finance, and throughout the Eid period, he tasked me with giving out money to various people, it began with us in his household, which comprised of my freeloading cousins and other relatives living there, then some of my aunts and uncles, some of his sisters and brothers, then his grandchildren that live with their parents, then his neighbours, and many other relatives I can’t list them, they were all benefactors of his generous gift. The cleaners who came by every day to clean the room also got their share. 

He would just say, give so and so this amount or give so and so that amount, and I complied with every request. He often spends a lot of time just thinking about who else he had missed on his Santa list, and will surprise you with an “Ah!” I forgot so and so, and will proceed to tell you how much you should give them. 

They say a good habit is a great thing to have, he often does this same charity when he was at home, he made it a habit, and for it to become one of his final acts, I can only pray to Allah to accept all his good deeds. 

The room is often silent and kept that way to allow Dad to have his rest, his body kept getting worse, he kept getting weaker and when his guests show a worried look on their faces seeing his condition, he tries to soothe them, reminding them that death will eventually overtake us all one day, so if it comes to it, it is nothing to be afraid of or to worry about…. the old man was prepared. 

He became so weak that every form of physical activity no matter how little, strains his body to its limit, he would need to rest even if all he did was turn around on his bed. Then one early morning, after I have assisted him across the room, he just sat there in a chair, catching his breath, I tried to communicate with him to tell him I will be just outside the door but he doesn’t seem to hear me, I think he partially acknowledged by nodding after a while, I got a little worried and wasn’t satisfied with leaving so I kept trying to communicate, then in an instant, his breathing dramatically hiked up, he was sucking in air very loudly and in large amounts, and he wasn’t responding to any of my attempts to communicate, at this point I was holding him down the chair so he doesn’t fall off. 

“Dad! Dad!!” I kept repeating next to his ear. I am usually not the panicking type, my friends acknowledged me as the guy who never got fazed by anything, but not today, here I was, holding down my grandfather to a green plastic chair, my hands shivering and tears streaming down my face, I began to think of what to do, I can’t go to the nurses since I can’t let go of him. I could try shouting, but I am not sure if that thought even occurred to me at the time, instead, I reached for my phone in my pocket and dialled my father. 

He was in town and the only man more unfazed than I am in emergencies, he won’t react emotionally and would be analytical in his approach. He answered and was a little surprised to hear me out of breath, I didn’t realise I was out of breath, he calmed me a bit and told me to tell him what happened, I simply told him to ‘get here fast’. 

Dad’s breathing subsided, I tried saying a few adhkar in hopes he might repeat after me, la ilaha illalah, I would say, and say and say again. A few minutes later he became a bit stable, it took a few more minutes before my father would arrive and before I could go to the nurses to call for help, so in the meantime, I decided to clean him up, I used baby wipes to wipe his arms, face and wherever I can reach, I was determined to make “The Ambassador” look presentable before anyone arrived, he is our grand patriarch, and I intend to make him look the part. 

He seemed to fall back asleep, breathing steadily this time, when he regained consciousness I helped him back onto his bed. 

I think it was from that day onward, or from the day after that, that he completely lost consciousness, he remained in that condition for three days, and on the last night of his life I remember my brother Abdulwahab and I taking turns to watch over him, one of us would sit in a chair next to his bed fanning him with a locally made hand fan, after every hour we would switch, I will sleep while he keeps watch and he will sleep while I keep watch. This happened all night. I remember feeling ‘I have never been more sleep-deprived in my whole life’, the previous weeks of toil seemed to be taking their toll on me. 

During one of my turns to sleep, my brother shook me awake, telling me that Dad’s breathing was abnormal, as soon as I was awake the first thing I heard was the sound of Dad’s heavy breathing. We immediately called for the nurses and doctors and made some calls home, the medical staff arrived promptly and kept doing CPR on him, I stood by his head at the bed, looking at breathe after breathe escape from his body, you could hear air struggling in his lungs. For several months after that experience I felt slight anxiety when I heard a person gasping for breath, even if it was just after moving something heavy. 

I just stood there observing the whole scene, watching everyone half-heartedly scramble to support Dad’s waning life, my brother even tried to help with the CPR, I just stood by, and after a while they also stood by, there was nothing left to do, “Farewell to you old man”, I whispered to myself. 

I didn’t cry, and it was only befitting of our stoic relationship. After some minutes, we were excused from the room, my father came out to tell us that Dad had passed away, but it didn’t sound like news to me, I had already said my farewells it seems, on the morning of the green chair incident. 

Everything happened super fast after that, everyone was caught up in the logistics of moving a body; the bathing rituals, the transport vehicles, clearing out the hospital room, warding off crying women, etc etc. . . one of the greats is gone, I thought to myself. 

As destiny would have it, I am currently writing the last lines of this article sitting at a desk from his room, this same room that served as the pinnacle of our journey. May Allah have mercy on his soul, may He grant him paradise. Amin. 

Dear Dad, it was an honour.