The moment we arrived at the hospital, I was admitted straight into the High Dependency Unit. Three days later, the doctor came bearing the worst news. “Folasade,” he began softly. “Your body is shutting down. If you decide to keep this pregnancy, you will be dead by tomorrow.” But there were already seven graves in our oko, I couldn’t imagine an eighth one.
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The first time I buried a child, the women in our village told me not to cry too loudly.
“It scares away blessings,” one of them whispered as they lowered my tiny son into the red soil behind our oko in Awgbu.
I remember staring at the small white cloth wrapped around my child and wondering how something that had lived inside me for nine months could suddenly weigh less than a sack of flour.
Chukwudi and I married when the world felt bright and promising. He was a strong, ambitious man who ran a successful local garage. He loves me deeply, but grief changes people.
