We
are gathered here today for a burial, but of what and of whom? The psalmist says:
but
that passage speaks only of the body, not of the soul. When a man stands as morally tall as my father did you can
only bury his carcase, not his essence.
In fact, for a man of such making, death represents a freeing of the
essential man from the trappings of the body.
Death represents the beginning of living – living in our hearts, living
through the fond memories we shall have of him, not so much for his sake but
ours, for the many ways in which he touched our lives and made them richer, for
the duty that having known him imposes upon us to go out and touch other lives.
Of
course, a man is various things to various people. Like the proverbial elephant, we all see and
experience him from different angles, without one view invalidating the other.
Because
of the privileged stand point from which I have been able to observe the man, I
will like to share the following, angling things basically from the lesson he
taught me, either directly or through his manner of living.
- Not to give in easily to a problem – Anything that has no mouth should not prove wiser than a man.
- The first person to discipline is yourself: if you discipline yourself, there may never arise the need to discipline those who follow you. “I can control myself” is better than “I can control my horse”.
- An account book is not kept until it is properly kept: if a kobo is missing from your account, then it is not balanced: (I used to keep his house rent books in the late 70s when he was serving in Enugu).
- Trust in God can be absolute if your faith is strong: In 1982, when I could not make it to church on my graduation thanksgiving day, having had an accident in far away Oyo State, he dutifully went to the altar to thank God even as though he did not know at the time where I was or what had become of me.
- Count your blessings: this lesson is of particular significance on this occasion. If I am equanimous about losing my father, it is largely because of it. While my dad lay in hospital and I was trying to cope with the doctors" professional assessment that and constant reminder that age was not on the side of the patient, I chanced upon a single page programme which my dad prepared for his 70th Birthday. It contains a table of the number of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds he had spent on earth as at that time. Upon seeing the document, I experienced a very unusual peace, for I realised that God had added approximately 1/8 of that to him since then. If he was thankful for 1, how come we cannot be thankful for 1 + 1/8?
And
so, I declare that we are not mourning but celebrating a life and that the
theme of our celebration is: Count your
blessings! The heart that God planted in
the baby that later got christened Olusanjo Osunsanya worked CEASELESSLY for: 915 months,
4,003 weeks.
In
the period, Pa Osunsanya earned the name father thirteen times over and ,though
he buried three (3) due to a health challenge that has torn apart many families
and even rendered some parents killers of their own children, the youngest of
his surviving children is 25 years old.
- He worked meritoriously for the Federal Government of Nigeria and retired into a 24 -year long life in retirement.
- Though he lost his father when he was just 39 years old, he lived long enough to see his first son achieve the age of 53.
- He did not live one day of his life in-retirement in a rented house.
- Whatever he received from his children, he received as a voluntary act of thanks from them and not as the carrying of a burdensome father. Etc.
In the family that my father built ,we were taught to respect the word and worship the truth. Thus you cannot just bandy half-truths about and expect not to be challenged for a proof. The result is that we tend to be argumentative. If it takes 1,000 questions to attain the truth, both the right to ask and the duty to answer are respected irrespective of who is asking and who is being obliged to answer. We are encouraged to seek the truth rigorously and not to be afraid of facing and accepting the bitter truth.
I am sure that the computation above proves that to some extent, but I want to relate another incidence that does the same. On the occasion of the incident, I received a handshake from my dad, a handshake that I could not have exchanged for that of a world president if such person existed. For people who know me, you know that when it comes to stating the truth, my usual tact deserts me. I cannot remember where the discussion departed from however, giving free reigns to my thoughts, I made a simple statement of fact: one which in retrospect, I realised would have rattled some elders.
I know that Yorubas say you do not speak of bones in the presence of the aged, but standing in the presence of the one who taught me to relentlessly seek the truth, that adage cut no ice. I blurted out” you may be stronger at 70 than some people at 20, but no matter who you are, you cannot be stronger at 70 than you were at 20. “There is no gainsaying the fact the some elders could have been annoyed at such a statement and even if they did not rail at the speaker, their internalised, bottled displeasure would have been readable.
It is really a show of the essence of our patriarch that he rather said spontaneously: “that’s my son. Shake my hand “and bequeathed me with an endorsement and a handshake which will live with me for as long as I live.
