Tuesday 8:57pm

Bolu: Hi wende, sorry to message you this late (I sleep at 7pm…I know, I know, it’s a gift).

But [I have] some bad news. Did you hear about the passing at your old office?

Wednesday 3:40am

Me: I didn’t. Who?! I was asleep earlier.

Me: *Huddled in bed miserably trying to convince myself to ring Bolu at 3:40am and immediately find out who died*

Wednesday 4:00am

Me: *Still huddling in bed trying to figure out whose death might hurt the least, afraid to ring Bolu*

Wednesday 4:30am

Me: *Slowly driving myself mental as I come to the steady realization that the death of anyone of the people I spent more time with than my family for almost three years would hurt the same, I finally reach for my phone to ring Bolu.*

Me: Bolu wake up! Who died?!?!

Bolu: *Silence*

Bolu: “Tosin. Tosin Phillips”

Me: *Air escapes my throat as my nose constricts, I suddenly have to re-teach myself to breathe. 1, out, 2, in.*

Bolu: “Hello…Wendy…”

Me: *My stomach muscles feel like they’re scrambling up my innards, climbing frantically over two kidneys, then a liver, swinging on lungs and grasping, choking the oesophagus in their rabid bid to escape through my mouth. My entire being feels hollowed, bottomed-out”

Me: “How” It’s not a question. It’s a statement.

*Clears throat*

*Repeat Wendy, with correct inflection this time*

Me: “How?!”

Me: “When…when did this happen?”

Me: “Who told you?!”

My reaction to death is always the same: I am defensive. I attack the messenger, wanting reassurance that the message is bad only because the messenger is incompetent.

Hearing of a death is always a violent act to me. I feel as though my personal safety, its sanctity, my sanity have been violated by this visitor that lands uninvited with the proverbial stool in hand even when I declare the seats in my life are full. I react to death first with anger not bereavement, shock not sadness. I am maddened. I am disoriented. Dazed. At 3:40am when I did a quick assessment of everyone at the firm who may have died, it never occurred to me to add Tosin.

Tosin?

Tosin?! The 25 year old Tosin?! With the big brain and bigger smile.

Tosin?! The self-assured NYSC one who got into Cambridge?

Tosin who lived on my street and joined me in my little car as we whined all the way to work in the winding traffic, burning under the 6am smoky heat only our wild Lagos can generate. We would both arrive at work, Tosin’s skin glowing from the ministrations of cars with farting exhausts while mine looked like I had wrestled an angel…and failed. I envied her; her quiet confidence, her reserve, her simple beauty, her obvious intelligence. Tosin with the young husband, then her boyfriend, whose dreams she excitedly shared with passion and quiet pride. Tosin the young pregnant mother excited to birth her dreams.

Tosin died?

Me: “When?”

I wanted to shout at Bolu. Scream at him for bringing gloom to my safe space, for breaking into the walls of my sleep with a shattering message seen at 3am, for confusing me. Now that I knew what I had been afraid to know, now that my feelings were unpacked and formed a rioting mass about my space, now I suddenly do not know where to store all this emotional luggage pooled at my soul’s feet. Now I want to demand of Bolu: “Who told you this?! What do you know about her?! Why are you spreading lies?! How do you know it’s true?…”

Me *Mentally teaching myself to breathe again. 1, in, 2 out*: “How…how did she die?…Wait, who told you she’s dead?”

Bolu: “Sheriff”

*Phone dies as though by my mind’s direction, not Etisalat’s notoriously poor service*

I don’t bother to ring Bolu back.

He is a good friend. He lets me sort through the roiling mess of emotions confusing me asking only later in the morning when I have unpacked my thoughts and feelings into neat boxes in the compartments of my soul, Bolu messages me so I know that he is thinking,

“I hope you’re okay.”

For almost three years OA was my family. I spent more time with those people than I did anyone else in the world from that October in 2011 when I got my employment letter, until February 2014 when I left the firm. Many days were grueling, yet every day was for learning. I find that even separated from them, when they hurt I grieve. They hurt today for the loss of a beautiful, charming, formidably clever young woman. The sort of woman that in OA slang we called, “A LION!”. Tosin was definitely the OA definition of “TRUE BLUE, BLUE TRUE AND THROUGH!” She will be surely and sorely missed.

I think Sheriff spoke my heart when he told me on Thursday morning:
“When I heard Tosin had died, Wendy, I feared God.”

So teach us to number our days [ or to consider our mortality], that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom [or that we may live wisely].
-Psalm 90:12