Laugh now, cry later
THERE is a certain smell that one encounters when they enter a hospital. It is a distinct smell that welcomes you before you have even set foot in any ward.
Simple science says that this ‘‘hospital smell’’ is just the simple interaction of different chemicals that are used across the globe to disinfect healthcare facilities.
In most hospitals, aqueous phenol solution, because of its ability to kill bacteria, has been used for decades, giving hospitals their own distinct odour.
However, most people perceive hospitals’ own ‘‘perfume’’ differently.
The ‘hospital smell’ is like an unseen cloud that lingers over us, unseen and menacing. While hospitals are intended to be a place of healing, due to the fact that remedies do not work all the time, they are unfortunately also the home of death.
That is why so many of us hate hospitals and their smell.
That smell is a malevolent vapour that reminds us of that time when we lost someone we love, or when we were sick and hapless.
When I sat down with Clive Chigubu in July 2019, he was sick of that hospital smell. Clive had disappeared from my life for the best part of two years, and whenever I had brought up the topic of him coming back on stage, he would brush it off.
So, when he walked into our newsroom, my mind was already clinging onto the idea that Clive had become a drunkard or an addict of some unknown addiction.
To my surprise, he broke the news that he had been in and out of hospital for months, and at one point had been told that he might never be able to walk again.
He told me of his slow and painful journey towards recovery, and how hospital staff would caution him to take his time as he tried to rush his recovery.
He just could not wait to be out of that hospital, away from the scent of death which, to him, now always bought a whiff of sadness.
He wanted to be out in the world again, out on stage in front of laughing faces and far away from that ward in which he woke up one day and found that the man next to his bed had died.
During that interview two things stood out.
One was Clive’s determination to beat the odds at all costs, to always have the last laugh despite whatever cards life dealt him. The other was his determination to never allow his suffering to become public knowledge.
Clive was a man who always preferred to go into single combat against the most formidable of his demons.
He never wanted his sickness, then and now, to become public knowledge. It is perhaps the same reason why he only reached out two weeks ago about his latest bout with cancer.
Perhaps, as a man who had grown accustomed to making people happy through laughter, he was reluctant to see them cry on his behalf. I have no doubt that on his funeral, he would have preferred us to laugh, then cry later when his body was now embedded in the earth.
Sure, he might be gone from this world but the smiles, the laughter will embalm the memory of the true Clive Chigubu.
When we sat down for that interview in 2019, I was struck by how Clive’s spirit seemed completely untouched by the ordeal he had just been through. He did not seem to have that dark cloud of sadness, so common with those that have had a brief flirtation with death, hanging over them.
It was as if death breezed past and he could only glance back at it with a smile.
It was the same impression had
him