One Second Away From Death! ( 2)
Continued from Saturday, July 10, 2021
ALBERT, his wife and five children watched, with abysmal sorrow and agony, as the bulldozers descended and demolished their cherished house. That day was the saddest in the life of Albert. He watched, mouth wide open with tragic silence as his house crumbled, ‘ from ashes to ashes’ as the doomsday prophet would say. His children cried and sobbed heartrendingly. Nze, his loving wife, wept and couldn’t control her tears. From that very day, Albert and his family became homeless. An old friend took pity on him and told him to pack into an unoccupied bungalow on his land the following week. He had to put many of his personal properties in other peoples’ homes and some outside the bungalow as the apartment wasn’t big enough to accommodate his personal belongings. A lot of his properties got spoilt in the rain and scorching sun.
Two weeks after this unwholesome and tragic development, Albert was on his way to the office when he discovered that his second car, a Volvo 260LE, had been stolen from where he parked it. He became completely confused and distraught. Sweat beads had formed on his forehead. He ran hurriedly inside the bungalow he was sharing and started looking for the stolen car under the table. He ran out again and kept saying: “I thought I parked the car here, I thought I parked it here!” He made the statement again and again. He was completely going out of his mind.
The last straw that broke the camel’s back was when his friend who gave him temporary accommodation was transferred from Lagos to the South south zone, Port Harcourt to be precise. This happened after he had spent four months squatting in the bungalow. His friend simply told him that he had to relocate since the house was a company’s property. This last move threw a spanner in the works and turned Albert into a totally sad man. That was why he packed to a shanty in Orile, Lagos along with his family. He became disorganised and disorientated. He couldn’t deliver good service to his company. He had become sullen and withdrawn. He became so psychologically imbalanced that he couldn’t do his work efficiently and effectively again. His last and only car too was confiscated by his company because of the debt he owed the organisation. The car, a Mazda 626- 2.0, was seized when the management realised that Albert was going out of his mind and becoming less productive.
Overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of his life, Albert decided to commit suicide by poisoning himself. He had taken a rat poison in his hand and was about drinking it when his wife roused from sleep to ease herself. She grabbed her husband by the hand and begged him not to kill himself.
“Why, Nze?” Albert asked his wife in tears, “Let me die, it’s better to die than face all these disgrace and shame… I’m earning nothing at the moment... I don’t think I can ever be able to pay the huge debts I’m owing my company… death is the best and glorifying option and solution to the series of crisis bedeviling me…”
“Take it easy Albert… don’t kill yourself,” she pleaded. “You have nothing to gain by killing yourself… God will take care of our situation… trust in Him,” Nze counselled her husband.