When December of 2023 casually strolled by, I and my lover had plans to paint it “detty”. We would storm Nigeria unannounced, get our parents checked into hotel rooms with king sized beds, the ones with chandeliers sitting pretty on the ceiling and shinning a brilliance of white rays on white painted walls.

The idea was exciting especially because visiting Nigeria would be an opportunity to see my lover don his doctorate gown for his convocation, I had planned to replicate an instagram video I watched a few months back. I would stand by an elevator and wait patiently for my lover to emerge while I chant “the emperor, the conqueror, the lion is here! Nzugbu! Nzugbu!! Enyiba Enyi!”. Swinging my frame from side to side and stamping one foot at a time just like I saw the lady in that video do. He would come walking towards me with smiles, decorated in a pair of suit we ordered from London and his long gown, a testament of true knowledge.

We had it all figured. The previous month, my man had bought me a dress for the event along with a pair of shoes with heels so high, I rang my mama to show her the pair and we laughed together calling them “akpola koc shoe“.

Everything came crashing when my phone rang in the early hours of the second of December. It was a call that announced death. The morning cold slammed the news hard on my chest. For a second, I thought it was a bad dream but the caller on the other end kept echoing numerous “hellos “ when my silenced seamed like a network failure.

My lover chuckled, he looked me in the eye this time and laughed. Disbelief and uncertainty in his eyes, he laughed again. Then he took the phone from my hands, put the loudspeaker off and plastered the phone against his left ear.
“Jeka “ he shouted!
The news bearer said the same words to his ears and that was when this man walked straight to the shoe rack, grabbed the pair of shoes I had gifted him from timber land and began to pace the length of the house.
He wasn’t crying and I wasn’t crying either. I couldn’t cry , I just could not process the information. I didn’t even know what to believe. I just sat there, right on the spot where I had received the call, while my man paced the house in silence, with shoes on, walking from the kitchen to the living room and back to the room and then to the toilet and the cycle continued for three hours until I heard him scream into a throw pillow in the living room then a burst of tears and wailing and more tears.

How did I console a man wounded by the sadness of the death of a loved one? I don’t know what words I said.

How did I cope myself? As my mind kept playing the track of our last conversation in my head.
I remember every word of his voice vividly. I still hear them.
December got dirty before it arrived, we never painted it detty.