ILLUSIONAL TOMORROW

As mortal beings, the key to longevity lies not in our possession neither do we have crystal balls which could help see into the future. We live everyday of our lives as though we are the martyrs of our continued existence. We make plans and pronouncements into the future, we stall and do in bits what we could have wholly accomplished because we are gifted with an illusional TOMORROW......

5th day of March, 2013 would forever be a day I long to forget. Just before the paleness of the morning gave way to its brightness, I had made my way to the park where I was to board a bus going to Onitsha from Akure in Ondo State. It was the opening day of the NYSC camp. Oh,what a glorious day it was with the whole place barely being able to contain the whole prospective corp members eargerly making their way into the long chain of waiting buses. From the look on everyone's face, it was evident that this was a long awaited day!. The start of a journey into a new phase.

With my luggage and others' safely secured at the back of the Siena bus I had boarded, we left Akure and I had felt a little withdrawn within me for I'd become so used to the town that it had become a strong part of me but national service takes precedence regardless of any emotion. The bus speedily ate up the road as the careful driver maneuvered his way out of Ondo State.

At around 9:25am or thereabout, the unxpected happened no sooner than we had gotten to Agbor road in Delta state. It was like scenes I usually see in movies.Suddenly the rare tyre of the bus by the right bursted and gave way and before we could decipher what was happening, the bus was already spinning on the express road. After repeating this auto-stunt spanning over 25m on the express and getting satisfied with its doom, it came to an abrupt stop and summersaulted twice.

In the midst of these and while it ensues, all I heard were shouts of "Jesus","Jehovah","blood of Jesus" etc.....now I can barely remember what I'd uttered but I'm sure I had kept repeating a phrase that had 'Jesus' embedded somewhere within. In a bid to get out so we could avoid being trapped because no one could tell if an explosion was to come next having gone through different phases of the misfortune already, we broke open one of the windows by the right while the bus was upside down just somewhere beside the express to escape......

While a few of us had sustained minor injuries and cuts, it was a miracle that I had come out unscathed like nothing had happened. It was so heart breaking that a fellow corp member heading to the Imo state camp had been unlucky. She had sustained serious head injuries and gone into coma. A call from the hospital she had been rushed to to the FRSC office where the rest of us had been ushered to confirmed her passage to the world beyond.....

She had been asleep prior to the accident, so it can be deduced that waking up to meet an accident in progress was so heavy a scene her heart couldn't bear and as we later gathered she was asthmatic. To have seen such a pretty girl cut off from life's sojourn while enroute camp after years of 'die-hard' studying in a Nigerian University was an agony I couldn't take in that I didn't know when gentle little stream of tear drops flowed unhindered from my eyes. I had silently wished that she survived it but it wasn't meant to be as fate had other plans....

On that spot, flashes of the minutes and hours prior to her demise had come rushing back. From the last call she had received when she had said ".....I'd call you when I get down" to the time she had brought out her makeup kit to make her face up just around 30mins to the incident. She had sat at my front and being a jovial person judging by the ease with which she had engaged me in a conversation, I got to know quite painfully, a little about her and had told her how pretty she was by heart because I couldn't muster it orally. Wish I had told her how pretty she was but I had had no clue neither did I've a premonition that I was never going to get that chance.....thought there was going to be a tomorrow.

My perception about so many things changed that day. The vanity of life and its mystery cum uncertainties. I had concluded that seeing the good in people rather than the flaws in them would be a virtue I'd doggedly embrace and to live everyday like there is no tomorrow.

The best part of tomorrow is that there is another one just a day later. Don't wait till tomorrow before you show some love, before you make friends rather than enemies, before you tell people how wonderful and meaningful they are to your being or before you settle all ills rather than wait to have a victorous closure.
Do all you can like there is no tomorrow, live justly and do what you can be remembered by. Even a brief moment with a person could be the fond moment we get to remember when they are no more. Don't spend your time sulking and dwelling on the past, today we have and can embrace every bit of.......tomorrow is forever an ever elusive mystery for it just never ends.

N.B: Wanted to do this on the 5th of September but things came up, tired of looking for the right time to remember the deceased.
Adieu Adebayo Abosede....RIP.

By: Okusanya Afolarin. T