The day the mechanic died, I was in the kitchen giving a dance performance to one of Ayefele’s songs in front of my cousin.

I heard my dad’s loud voice from upstairs. He was singing loudly as he usually did. Flakes and I rolled our eyes and shook our heads laughing at his untuned voice and resumed my show. We stopped abruptly a few seconds after. That wasn’t a song. He was lamenting. 

“O God! O God why? O God why? Why?”

My heart sank and I ran upstairs jumping two steps at a time.

I met him in the prayer room. His eyes were red and wet with tears and he hid his face from me.

“Daddy what happened? What’s wrong?”

My mind raced and many thoughts entered my head. Did something happen to mum? Was his business okay? What could have happened to make daddy breakdown?

I probed some more before he looked up to me and broke the news – “Oluware is dead.”  A cold shiver went down my spine. 

You see, uncle Oluware was not just a mechanic to us. He was like family and there was not one week that passed that he didn’t come over. In fact, it was when he didn’t come over the last week that my mum figured something was wrong and reached out to him. He was terribly sick. He had adult measles and another sickness at the same time. But that’s not the point of my post.

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