A week before our knocking rites, I was involved in an accident. It was a journey she told me not to embark on. She called a day before the journey to plead with me not to go. I asked why. I wanted a concrete reason but each time I asked why, she told me, “I don’t know. I think it’s too far a journey for you to embark on just because of your friend’s sister’s funeral.”
He wasn’t just a friend. Yes, I didn’t have any special relationship with the deceased sister but the relationship between me and Eric was special. We grew up together and were schooled together until life pushed us apart when we became adults. I’d lost every friend along the way except Eric. I told Sandra, my girlfriend, “It’s far but Eric would show up for me if it was my sister who died.”
It was a peaceful morning. Nothing foretold the disaster that was yet to come. I got to the station and board the bus. It took thirty minutes before the bus got full. There was a preacher who engaged us until the car got full. I was listening to him. He was talking about God and his grace and mercies. He preached the way my pastor in church would do so I listened. When the bus got full and was about the move, he prayed committing the journey into God’s hands. He took his offertory and got down. I put my head on the back of the seat in front of me and started sleeping.
Along the way, I heard the woman next to me asking, “What’s smelling in the car.” Someone murmured something that sounded like, “It’s been smelling like this for a long time.” I was sleeping and the sleep was so good that my nose ignored the scent they were talking about. I just wanted to have a good sleep. The next sound I heard was a collective one. Everyone in the bus was shouting and calling out for something. The bus was shaking violently so I lifted my head, only to see the bus off track and heading towards something that looked like a bridge.
The noise got louder as the bridge got nearer. I was looking at the driver hoping he would do the right thing, but he kept going. It was at that point that I started shouting Jesus, the name that was spilling out of everyone’s lips. Before we got to the bridge, the bus somersaulted. That was the last thing I saw before darkness veiled my eyes.
The next time I woke up, my left arm was gone. I tried to make meaning out of the faces I saw when I woke up at the hospital. “Who is this and why is he smiling? Where does he know me from and why is he in my room?” My room didn’t look like what I was seeing, I remembered. The scent of the room told a story I couldn’t relate to my room. I tried lifting myself from the bed but I felt heavier than I used to be. The person standing next to me said softly, “He’s awake.” I remember telling myself, “Why is he announcing my awakening?”
I forced my head to look around only to see other people’s beds in the same room as mine. I knew then that I was in a hospital bed but “What brought me here?” The whole thing felt like a dream so I waited patiently to wake up from it. I didn’t. It took a while before I came to full awareness and saw my left arm gone.
I cried like a baby. I was asking about my family, “Where are they? Why are they not here? Why did you cut off my arm when I was sleeping?” I asked a thousand “whys” but not a single answer was given. My mom came on, followed by my dad. Some friends came to visit that day. Eric came the following day. He looked battered. He said, “I’m sorry Bro. I’m even ashamed to look at you, knowing I’m the reason this happened.”
He moved me to tears and later consoled me. The only person I was waiting to see was Sandra. I didn’t know how she was going to take it, the fact that I’d lost an arm. “Is that the end of our marriage plans? Would she love a man without an arm?”
She didn’t enter the ward straight when she came around. She stood at the door and stretched her neck to look in to see if she could see me without me seeing her. When our eyes met, she leaned on the wall next to the ward door. I looked at her and she looked back at me. I looked at the place where my left arm used to be, just to draw her attention to what I’d lost. She walked in slowly, remaining rigid as if she were walking in a morgue with a pile of bodies at her sides. She didn’t say a word for several minutes. When she finally talked she asked, “How are you?”
“I wish I died,” I answered.
A few weeks later I was discharged. I didn’t want to revisit our marriage plans. I was scared she was going to say no and throw me off balance. She looked at me with pity in her eyes. I wanted to see the love she had for me before the accident. The love in her eyes when she told me not to embark on the journey, but each time I saw her, it was pity I saw in her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt me. She was there for me but treated me like an egg. When I started therapy, she was there for me, urging me to win. There was one thing I wanted to win, her love again.
One day I gathered the courage and asked about the marriage. Her answer was, “Let’s concentrate on healing.” But what I heard was, “I’m not going to marry a man without an arm. Grow an arm first.”
My self-confidence was non-existent. I was hoping to hear yes to be validated but all I heard was no. Everyone treated me like I was a sick person. I didn’t want that. One day I went to see Sandra’s mom. I told her about the plan to go ahead with the marriage. She asked me, “Has Sandra accepted to marry you?” “We were close before the accident. I’m well again. I want to go on with it.”
She shook her head and asked me to talk to Sandra again and get her yes. I didn’t speak to Sandra about the marriage again until a year after the accident. I felt whole though without an arm. I’d learned to accept the new me and was doing well at it. I brought the topic again to the table. Sandra never left my side. She didn’t change because I’d lost an arm, if anything, she became more present in my life trying to make me comfortable. I wanted more but she wanted to see me healed. That day I asked her, “Are we getting married or do you just want to help and later leave me?”
She smiled and said, if I didn’t want you I wouldn’t be here all this while. I wanted you to concentrate on your healing because I was always going to be here for you. No matter how you see it, you’re a new person. I wanted you to find yourself first so I don’t marry a man who doesn’t know himself.”
We discussed what her mom told me. We discussed what her family thinks about my new situation. She assured me, “They are my family but they don’t determine anything. We will get there.”
I trusted her words even when it looked like it was keeping forever. We had little fights here and there because I was getting jealous of the people in her life. When I saw a guy with her, I looked at his two arms and got jealous. I would ask her, “So you’re delaying us because you have a whole man around you now, right?” It will turn into an argument and she’ll say something like, “You see why I’m taking my time? You don’t know yourself now and I’m finding it hard to also know you. Where’s this jealousy coming from? You were not like that?”
I took time to deal with my demons, to accept who I’d come to be, without but or maybe. It was hard but I didn’t want to lose Sandra. When she finally said “Yes, I do” during our wedding, I was shaking. I couldn’t believe she did. My arm was shaking when I was putting her ring on her finger. She saw it so she made her hand stiff and directed it into the ring while I tried to hold the ring still. The pastor said, “You may hug the bride.”
I kissed my arm at that moment. If I had the two, it would be the longest hug in history and I’ll hold her too tight she might run out of breath. I had only one left so I brought her in and ran my hand behind her back in a hug that lasted less than thirty seconds. I was trying very hard to hold back the tears but they fell.
That was the last time I cried. The rest has been full of laughter. To me, it is either Sandra or no one else. The kind of light she brings into my life is different. When she’s not home, I yearn to see her. When she’s home, I don’t want to let the minutes pass without looking at her, to feel her presence and thank God that I have her.
I’m writing this to let her know that if a day comes in our lives when I give her a reason to doubt my love for her, she should read this and rest assured that I have a full heart, and that heart is for her. In my next life, I would like to do it with her. If we get a third chance at life, I still will want her to be the one.
—Gerald
