TRIBUTE TO MRS AGNES USIKARO ANIEREOBI NEE UKWADE
Hello Usi,
Over the years, I have copied the use of that lovely, prophetic [meaning: ‘pre-announced’] middle name of yours from your childhood friend – my wife -, for whom [the already ‘pure’/‘holy’] “Agnes” was probably just too simple, too cheap, too common, to place on such an Agreeable, Gracious, Noble, Exceptional, Self-sacrificing (A.G.N.E.S) individual, as you.
Your departure having left me wordless and speechless, let me keep it simple and share here some of what I summoned the courage (of a “miserable comforter” like Job’s friends) to tell your children a day after your demise was announced. Ìyókù di ọjọ́ Àjíǹde, like my people would say! Yes, Usi, we'll have a lot to chat over when we meet on the Resurrection Day!
The first thing I told the Aniereobi young people in my letter to them was that I knew you were gone to be with your Lord but that it still left a sweet-bitter taste in our mental cavities. Sweet because, unlike the biblical Apostle Thomas, we know where you are gone to and the much you have done to deserve presenting yourself before your Saviour and Lord whom you faithfully served here on Earth. Sour because, we all will miss you dearly here below until we get There ourselves. Of course, we had all hoped and prayed for almost two years that you would scale through sickness on this side of Eternity and join us all in a victory lap. Unfortunate, the Lord chose to do otherwise.
I also shared with your children the story of your last visit to Lille: Shortly before you took the coach from the Lille Europe station (on 24/02/2019) for your return journey to England, as we finished lunch, you looked me straight in the face across the table and asked “Brother George, what have you been doing lately to invest in Eternity?”. Surprised as I was by the question, I do not remember now what exactly my response was then, but I know that it has stayed in my mind since then, and served to alert me on the need to constantly be prepared to give a clear answer to that question. As my wife would say, Usi, you were “very Eternity-focused”!
I went on to tell the young people that I have thought of, and continued to pray for each one of them, like we have done since you first announced two years ago that you would be going into hospital for surgery on your return to England. I also told them I could not pretend to have answers to the many questions that everyone was asking about your early departure from life’s stage, but I emphasized that I knew Someone who not only had all the answers but is also able to console and comfort each one of us as we grieve. He is called the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles …” (2 Cor 1:3). It’s unto Him that I commend each one of your young people for, He alone is able to keep and take care of them Today and Tomorrow, like He did Yesterday. Yes, Udochukwu, Adaeze, Nkechinyelum and Ebelechukwu are in Good safe hands!
I even reminded them that, in the last days you spent with us on Earth, you and I shared a common profession: teaching. I discussed how we would chat and compare notes on similarities and differences in secondary school and university education in Nigeria, France and Great Britain; how we thought the student population may have changed in their approach to learning from what we knew in our time but how they remained basically the same as other young people around the world: some serious, some not and many in the middle! Let me leave the rest of the teacher-talk to your daughter Nkechi, one of the latest additions to our profession, as she writes her book on who the good teacher is.
I concluded by sharing how you would often joke that I was going to be the first close person whose career you would follow closely as he sought to go up the university career ladder. Remember the number of times we said “If the Lord wills!”? I therefore encouraged each one of them that in their chosen endeavor, they needed to know that Mom and other saints gone before us are the fans on the Other side of the field, cheering us on. I ended on a note like this: “Young people, let’s be encouraged in whatever we do! Mom would be happy we succeeded!”
Thanks, Usi, for the moments shared together in Great Britain and in France. Thanks for the delicious meals (the various forms of Swallow and the countless obstacles in the soup!) you provided anytime we were in your home. Thanks for the family friendship at your various addresses in Greater London and the Lille Metropolitan area. And, thanks for the Christian fellowship begun here Below and which we hope to continue there Beyond.
Usi, sùn un re o!
Brother George, as you would say.
