Die We Must, Noose or Not

There’s something freeing about death. Those who commit suicide have their reasons for doing so. Free at last! They can no longer fret themselves bemoaning what another man thinks of them. They also care little of what we may say of them after they are gone, they don’t have to. Disparaging comments from those around us, true or imagined, afflict living souls, but what is an insult to a corpse? It doesn’t mind your censure, neither is it perturbed by detesting. Living requires courage, conscious or subconscious, because you have at some point to face a sneer, answer to a slander, or face a provocation. Suicide demands more courage yet. Suicide means you are desperate enough to end your life despite not knowing what tomorrow has in store. Maybe there could finally be some emancipation, but surely, its likely to be just more of the same; suffering, pain, heartbreak.

When you have a 36-hour shift, and you spend every minute of it on your toes, delivering babies, attending to emergencies, administering meds, writing reports, losing some patients right before your eyes, and thereafter no one seems to be mindful of your plight but instead they opt for condescension and caustic remarks, maybe you can endure twice of that if some money comes with it, but when there is no compensation for all these woes, you lose your mind. And you make that decision that has at least the promise of freeing you.

Others do it for love. Everyday. When someone you love doesn’t return that love, with the same fervor and sincerity, when they instead love someone else, and maybe you catch them during one of their liaisons, which is probably the twentieth, is there a reason to go on living? Why go on living when you cannot have the love you desperately pine for? Dead people don’t need love, do they? Romeos do it for their Juliets, Juliet who it turns out was only asleep, and when Juliet awakes to find her Romeo dead, is their any benefit of one more minute in this vile earth. Till death do us part, only I will kill myself afterwards. What of the guilt that tails behind a mistake. One we cannot forgive ourselves, and so allow no one else to forgive us? When you have done a mistake, one that will not allow the world see you in the same light ever again, or so you think, despite however much they may try otherwise; when you cannot look at the eyes of another human being because of your sin, having your eyes shut forever feels like an escape. That same guilt and remorse hastened Judas to his suicide. What is more heartbreaking than the haunting consciousness that you have betrayed the Savior of mankind.

Some will do all that is in their power to stave off death for as long as they can, yet others actively seek its embrace. Give me something for the pain, and let me die. Jeremiah de Saint-Armour in Garcia’s Love in the Time of Cholera makes a vow against decrepitude. He cannot bear the inconvenience of old age, so he willfully ends his life by inhaling the fumes of gold cyanide. Dr. Juvenal Urbino finds him ‘bathed’ in the scent of bitter almonds. It’s a great way to start a novel:

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

With a suicide. But you are wrong dear doctor, it isn’t unrequited love; it’s a man afraid of old age. Maybe it is unrequited love after all, it is always unrequited love. Or maybe mostly. But what would we say of Flannery O’Connor, with a diagnosis that portends the knowledge that you are living on borrowed time? Many a mother will take a bullet for her son and a soldier for his country. Is that suicide? What of the rich man with a great harvest, with the intention of building more barns, only for the Lord to claim his soul that night. So whether I have a smile on my face today, or whether I have driven you crazy in love, or whether you party yourself stiff, or whether you eat a morsel of whatever for supper, or whether you are caught cheating in an exam and your face paints the web, one fate awaits us all. Some of us are accomplices with that fate, we get the noose and we buy the poison. Others don’t want to consider the thought that this world is not their home. But death is the wave that washes upon every human shore, whether we wish it or not. All men must die. And we are men.

I don't love my wife anymore

I am afraid, and I believe rightly so, of marriage. Love at first sight has been, for a while, something of peculiar interest to me. Though, finally, and for my own good I believe, I have come to the point where I no longer believe in such a thing as love at first sight. It is easy to love someone today, and tomorrow, but to love them everyday for the rest of our lives, that is something for which most of us are entirely incapable of as long as we continue to think that love is just a feeling, and nothing more. I agree with James Dobson that there is no way we can suddenly love someone we have just met. We can admire them, we can be spellbound by them perhaps, but we can never love them, truly love them, in the literal sense of the word. Love requires a kind of commitment that at times bids us to make sacrifices we never foresaw, and maybe that is why couples fall out of love, because if people can fall in love, it means they can also fall out of love. As long as we continue to misjudge, and misunderstand love, the divorce rate will go on rising.

Fiction perhaps expresses the idea of falling out of love more 'beautifully'. I tried it in my short story So This Is Love. In Garcia's Love in the Time of Cholera, Fermina Daza falls in love with Florentino Ariza, and then to our heart-rending disappointment falls out of love with him, only to fall in love with him again five decades later. Love! you protean thing.

Here's a passage from Jane Eyre, as Jane tries to explain to Mr. Rochester how he will go from loving to detesting her (I am not sure if it really is detesting, but I think so) and then perhaps he will like her again. Like her, not love her.

"For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,—a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,—like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband's ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master."

Or maybe Fermina Daza never loved Florentino Ariza a second time, she probably only liked him. We will never know.

So This Is Love

‘Get up.’ I opened my eyes to see her staring at me with a loathsome look of disgust and impatience. I shut my eyes tight and let out a yawn that I for a moment hoped would rid me of the anger that was quickly rising in my chest. ‘What time is it?’ I asked calmly, trying to hide my frustration behind a demeanor of tranquility and composure. I had had a long night. For the past three weeks I had been sleeping on the sofa, and it had not been a great experience so far. I had wanted to book a hotel room every night while I drove home from work but I never got myself around to do so. I would find myself at home however much I hated it, and I still wanted to see her. ‘I don’t know.’ she answered curtly with a smirk on her lips. ‘I want to clean up the room, you can find somewhere else to prolong your nap.’ She added after a minute of ominous silence during which I had sat up, put my hands on my thighs and planted my face to the ground, weeping silently that I was in this hole of torture. In response I lifted my face to hers. Our eyes met and I saw that glow that had won me over years ago while we were still in Medical School. Those were the same eyes that had driven me mad with infatuation. When I first met Alshie, I never thought that I would come to love and adore her as I did.

I used to see her in Medical School Christian Union, and I would quickly say hi to her like I always did with other ladies, careful not to prolong a conversation into anything awkward and unseemly. She had about her a venerable air of composure that revealed an unmistakable and solid sense of direction in life. She was not outspoken but seemed to have a close friend who was her exact opposite. I never thought much of Alshie until we found ourselves serving in the Hospitality ministry together. And then bit by bit we got to know each other, and soon realized how similar we actually were. We loved the same things, we hated the same things. We went on to confess how we were both introverts. We also were first-borns. She was a writer as she was a reader, so was I. I had asked about her favorite read, and she had said she loved John Bunyan’s A Pilgrims Progress more than anything else; so did I. After she sent me the link to her blog, I stayed awake the whole night revelling in every single word of beautifully curated articles that it was impossible not to love. She was an inspiration. When we shared about how we got born again and how our journeys in salvation had been, I saw in Alshie a partner. I knew it in that instant that I was speaking to my wife. It had been said that for a Christian, there was no better place to find a wife that in Christian Union, and that it was particularly important to get a woman who loved the Lord. Here we could begin a relationship that would be guided by principle, and we would have so many people to guide us. Alshie had to be the one; she was decent, few of words, and she had a beautiful smile. I had told my then roommate Njoroge Maina, that I desire nothing less in a lady, and cared less about anything more.

I just didn’t know how I would get past my fear and confess my feelings. And such a disposition of restrain was inspired more by the fear that my feelings would be unrequited than it was because of priggishness. I had had crushes for a million ladies, but I had never dared to ask them out or tell anyone about how I felt. In the end I was glad that I never did, because such feelings soon revealed themselves to be useless and distracting infatuations. Even so, I knew that to win this fair lady, I couldn’t afford to be faint at heart. I would soon need to tell my feelings if I would ever get Alshie to be with me. Every time I looked into the beautiful blue glint in her eyes, I wondered if she felt the same way for me.

It is difficult to hide the flame of a candle with bundles of dry straw, for it soon dawned on me that my boys had sniffed me out, when one of my forebears stood me up after service one Sunday and questioned me on what my intentions with Alshie were. I immediately realized that my ways had been found out. When a man is in love, sooner or later the world will know, however much he hides it. ‘This cannot be a mistake Daniel,’ he had said, ‘if you are not sure that you love her, please don’t get it any further.’ I had stayed silent, looked down to the ground, my heart still racing hard as I had not expected the confrontation. ‘I am sure I love her,’ I had said with a kind of solemn and certain conviction that surprised me as much as it did Michael whose face softened and lit up into an encouraging smile of someone who seemed to have been moved by what had to be a genuine confession. ‘Well…’ he had remarked and gone on to share insights from his own experience when it came to the murky waters of romance.

I didn’t ask Alshie out until a year later when I was completely sure of my feelings, or at least when I thought I was. ‘I’ll give you my response on Friday, after the service.’ That was the response she gave me and the only words she spoke after I seemed to be done with my prolonged speech about eternal devotion and fidelity. This was on Monday, and I immediately knew it would be torture for me. Never has five days been an eternity. I did not sleep a wink, neither did I properly study. Everyday my love for Alshie seemed to be multiplied by a factor of 1000. I loved her more with the passage of every second, and adored her the more with the dawn of each day. I soon knew that as long as she walked the earth, I would never be happy with anyone else. That Friday I arrived a little late for the service as I first needed to finish up a report on a Medical Camp we had had a week ago. I got in when the worship team was singing Yahweh Yahweh by Nathaniel Bassey. I surreptitiously swept my eyes across the room. She was not there. I kept looking during the praise session, through the teaching session. I couldn’t bear to face the reality that she had not come for service until the Chairperson had given the benediction, until we had shared words of the Grace and we were dispersing for tea. I was cooked. Not coming for service meant one thing, she didn’t want to have to face me and give me the bad news, at least not so soon. I was broken, and did my best to avoid the chatty parties that would notice the streak of sadness in me that evening. While I was scrolling through Uber looking to see if I could get an affordable solo ride home, the message came up: ‘Hi Henry, I had to rush home this evening. Everything is alright. Let’s please talk on Sunday.’ I smiled, and read it all over again. I now strangely knew what her answer would be.

When we got married, we truly loved and enjoyed each other’s company. Everyday was bright and exhilarating. We couldn’t get the fill of each others love. We kissed, we embraced, we caressed; we did everything imaginable that a happily wedded couple would do. Alshie was the evidence of the one thing I ever did right in my life. It was a win. ‘The greatest mistake a man can make in his life, is marring the wrong woman,’ I had heard it said and repeated a thousand times. I was proud at what I accomplished. I had bagged the price, what more could a man want in his life?

As days went by, so did the happiness slowly fade with it. Everything was perfect until it was not. Slowly but surely we soon realize that we never liked each others company as much. We had drunk to our fill from the pitcher of love until it was empty. Suddenly we did not love one another anymore. Everything soon became mechanic and artificial until it was impossible to put up with the facade anymore. I would look into her eyes, and I could see coldness where I had seen a fiery passion. She was not beautiful anymore, she just looked like any regular lady I would meet in the streets. I hated the shape of her nostrils and how tiny her ears were. There was no longer any joy in going back home. Her presence was suffocating, she gave out an air of death. As each day passed, it became clear that even though I had never hated her, I had never loved her either. She soon, with a chilling air of insouciance, confessed that letting me into her life was surrendering to a chimera and a whim she now regretted every second of her life. We had thought we were soulmates when we never were; we had only forced ourselves to believe it, and reality had soon intruded. Alshie was a great lady, but she was never supposed to be my wife. It might have turned out much better if we had stayed friends. Everything might have been fine if nothing ever turned romantic.

‘The Papers?’she asked. A tear fell from my eye. I had still not mustered the courage to sign the divorce papers. Maybe I still believed things would take a different course for the best, but would they? Divorce? Who would have thought that I would be caught up in a divorce? ‘I am yet to sign them.’ I said and rising up. ‘So this is love,’ I stuttered silently as I made my way up the matted staircase to take a shower.