I don’t like going outside to mess around when I have a wife; I loved my wife and I would do anything for her. This was a woman who married me against all advice by her family not to marry me, so I was determined not to let her down. ‘Let them see that all the rubbish they had been saying about me would never come to pass.’
They said I was unworthy of her…
That I was beneath her because I did not go to the university and she did…
They said I was not going to let her achieve her life goals and so I wanted to show them that, they were wrong.
So I gave my wife all she wanted. I run a successful printing business and I make good money. I am not saying I am rich but I am not poor either; so you understand me.
Now, like any marriages, in-law wahala or not, we had our share of troubles. One of which was, my wife didn’t like making love to me as regularly as I wanted.
And I am the type that likes to do it regularly, you know, after going out, coming back home…eat, relax with your wife…
I am a normal red blooded male.
But every time I want to touch her; she would say, I have a headache, I have neck pain, I have menses, I have teeth pain, my nose is bleeding…Sonny is sleeping in our bed, Grandma will hear us in the next room...you know, all kinds of excuses just to deny me my right!
If you have a woman who is always giving one excuse or another…won’t you start looking outside?
But like I told you before, I never went looking at the women outside when I had a fine wife at home!
So many times when I say, “…oya come let’s enter room…” and she starts with ‘my eye is paining me, my lungs have no air…,’ I would just say, “ok, I will be gentle.”
You know, it can be humiliating begging your own wife to make love to her when there are many ladies out there putting it in your face anyhow. many time, it is by force…
Why?
But like I said, I wasn’t going to do anything that my in-laws would now say, “ehen, we said he was a useless human being.”
So that day, as it happened, it was a Sunday, I was already quarrelling with her when I refused to go to church with her.
I had a job that kept me in the office late every night from Monday to Saturday; ven that Sunday, I was meant to go to work; I gave my boys the morning off, we were to resume at the office at 2pm to continue; it’s a book we had promised the client we could deliver in 13 days. So when my wife said, ‘come lets go to church,’ I said, “No. I am tired. I will go next week.”
But woman and wahala; she began to count all the weeks I had missed church, all the days I had missed family events, all the days I missed something about the children…
I was angry because this woman knew where I was, I was working!
That day, I was vexed and this is a woman who had denied me sex in almost two weeks! My body was hot!
I told her she wasn’t going anywhere, she was going to stay with me in the house.
I told our children to go back to their rooms and sleep, it was Sunday morning and my wife always woke them up for church early. The children were happy to go back to bed, no church!
I asked my wife to come inside the room and told her how she was making me unhappy; I told her that she was going to church but her home isn’t settled; she was going to church and her husband isn’t satisfied, what kind of Christianity is that?
I demanded my rights as a husband…she began to complain of headache, of neck pain…
I said, “lie down, you will see the headache will go fiam!”
As usual, I said, “I will be gentle,” but she was reluctant and her being reluctant wouldn’t be the first time but would pressure her and we would still make love and she would even enjoy it many times, in fact.
So we were doing it, I was gentle, she was still saying her tongue and head and leg and you know, the usual general complaints. I just continued to do the thing…hoping she would start enjoying it too. I was talking to her, telling her how much I love her…you know, after not getting it for such a long time, the thing was in my head…let me just get as much as I could because I didn’t know when next she would allow me…but even at that…I noticed she wasn’t responding to me as usual. I thought at first, when a woman no wan do, she would pretend so you can stop; so I teased her, I said, “is it because of this small thing I am putting into you that you are doing your eyes like that?”
She would usually laugh or tell me, “no, its not small…”you know as husband and wife tease each other?
But that day, she was just not into it and for me, there’s no point making love to a wife who wasn’t responding. This isn’t rape, it’s love making, so I wanted her to get pleasure from it as well, so I thought, maybe I should change tactics. I turned her over and was still…you know?
Again, I noticed she wasn’t sounding well…that’s when I stopped to look at her face because it was from the back that I was…yes. She liked that… I turned her and she was doing as if she couldn’t breathe…
I immediately tried to help her breath because, I mean, this is my wife not some woman I picked up. This is a woman I would give all the good things I can give to, so why would I deliberately hurt her especially when I was making love to her?
I realized this was no pretense, something was wrong with her!
I poured water on her face and tried to get her to even tell me exactly what was wrong with her…after a while, I quickly dressed her up, I called for help from neighbors to help me carry her into my car downstairs. I needed help because my wife is on the big side. Two of the men living in our compound came out and assisted me and the nurse living in our boys quarters followed me to try to resuscitate her as we took her to the hospital.
We took her to the hospital close by and they rejected her, they said we should take her to general. I begged them that she was my wife, at least, they should stabilize her before sending us away but they refused.
I was forced to drive her all the way to general hospital from our house in Alakuko, I took her to Ifako…it was that nurse who went with me, she sat in the back with my wife, holding her head…the woman kept saying, “we’re losing her, we’re losing her…”
By the time we got there, I ran inside for a wheel chair or someone to assist me in bringing her in from the car but there was no wheel chair and the auxiliaries didn’t work on Sundays; one small doctor, eventually followed me to where I packed the car outside to check her pulse and he said, “There’s no sign of life.”
That’s how I lost my wife!
That’s how she died!
I will never believe that a man can make love to his wife and she would die…I have never heard that before in my life as a 45 years old man but see me today…see me see the wahala of my life. See me see this life!
Maybe if she had gone to church, she would still be alive
Maybe she would have even died in church because, how can a woman who is healthy just die like that?
My in- laws are already giving me hell; they said I raped her to death! How can? She was my wife!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)