By Elempe Dele
My old man, Dr. Ade Elempe, was born in the 30s – say less than two decades after my ancestors left their homes up in the hills where they lived in huts and caves. They were urged to come down the valleys by the white men during the colonial mandate so that they can easily be accessed.
Yes, they lived up in the hills in small cluster communities. They went to the streams of their gods to fetch water. Their dishes were made from the earth. While the men went cultivating the land and brought food, the women picked brambles to keep the cooking fire burning. There were no grocery shops as we see these days, all they had were trade by barter.
Today, the old man’s passage is as slow as running runnels – he is in his 90s. I go often to check his pulse and see that his coated feet are not too cold. I know he can hear the ancestors calling. I remember when his own father was in this position, he was the one who bought drinks and called the community to send him off, that he was seeing those who had gone before. He said he saw them dancing, skirting around with their wizened faces, creased sinewy hands beating drums.
Apart from pacing around his room and to loudly announce my presence to him in his usual half sleep, I constantly declutter his fairly large room. That is, I try to clear out some of his belongings that are no longer useful which he never would have allowed to be done. He will tell you to leave them, I will still use them or I will do it myself…
The items I take away include but not limited to empty cartons, sheets of papers, used perfume bottles, small rags, cotton balls, empty insecticide cans, finished dye cans, used tooth brushes, packets of used drugs, bottles of hot balms, wires, ropes, canes, chewing sticks…I take them away slowly and tell the caregiver to help dispose them properly.
In her book, the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson admonishes readers to adopt minimalism and says putting things in order helps families raise insightful discussions, and makes the process uplifting rather than tasking. In Sweden, it is called döstädning. It is a simple task of clearing chattels from homes or rooms, and can be done at any stage in a man’s life.
I have decided that whenever I am home, I will help the old man, without his consent, clear some of his unnecessary stuffs away. I partly try to send him home gently, and it also gives space in the room which feels claustrophobic to me with too many thing no one can ever use. I can pace around more, and light is allowed to enter into the room where he lays all day thinking beyond here.
I recall when one of my distant aunts died in Benin City, we had to contend with so much of her stuffs that were not needed as at the time of her death. Some were ‘stuffs’ she was given in burials, marriages, seminars, conferences and church programmes she actually didnt need. She had very large drums, dishes, spoons, trays, rubber dishes, hand fans, cartons of empty drinks no longer in circulation, old television, kettles, pots, sixties blouses, old wrappers and funny gold like trinkets.
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As at the time of her death, I had not come across the idea of Death Cleaning, but I knew the weight of cleaning her house after death. Several relatives had to come and we sold and gifted some to Hausa scavengers. It was after reading Margareta’s book that I connected with the stress we went through clearing my her house filled with chattels.
So while I am bidding my old man farewell, I am cleaning his room from the things he once was hoarding. I feel very fulfilled after every time I do it – taking away a lot of his old clothes and pieces of stuffs no longer needed in the room where he lays twenty four hours turning and turning. I however leave his old pictures for they remind me, us, how he was, they remind me of old memories, they remind us of the journey of life like his that awaits us all.
