Elizabeth Adisah Iddi African Mother
By Jack Toronto The Afro News Vancouver
Sign on the wall of the clinic where my blood samples are taken: “I plan on living forever. So far, so good.”
North Americans live in a “death-denying society…we search for immortality – in diets, exercise programs, plastic surgery to keep us looking youthful, treatments to cure incurable diseases,” writes Dr. David Kuhl in What Dying People Want. But to deny death is to deny life. Death makes life precious, driving courageous people to find meaning in their lives. Such courage is in short supply in Canada where most of us follow the assumptions of mainstream culture until the reality of death comes calling in the form of a diagnosis of terminal illness that plunges us into loneliness, guilt, shame and despair. In his work as a palliative care physician Dr. Kuhl devoted himself to helping his patients to experience hope, joy and intimacy at the end of life, treasures discovered only if the dying face death and do the hard work of discovering their true selves and mending broken relationships to live as honestly and fully as possible in the time that is left.
“In Africa, life is cheap.” My father was a doctor and I was about 12 years old when he reported this comment made by a colleague who had worked in a small African hospital. Not true. In northern Ghana in the 1960s life was precious but death was such a stark reality that people had no illusions of invincibility. Half of the children died before age 5, most from malaria and dysentery. In Tamale and throughout Ghana babies were not named and “outdoored” until they had lived long enough after birth to show that there was some hope of their surviving the many dangers they faced. For the first and only time in my life I saw a dead body lying by the road near the Yeji ferry wharf on Lake Volta. There were no emergency response vehicles, no yellow tape to hold back a crowd while paramedics attempted a high tech resuscitation. The person had died, was covered with a sheet and life went on around the corpse.
The random pain of life could not be hidden by advanced medicine. Crooked teeth stayed crooked. Umbilical hernias distorted bellies and anybody born with a cleft palate had to live with it. Infection in a routine cut could be fatal.
Yet life in Tamale throbbed with joy. On market days the centre of town buzzed with trade. Merchants called out to entice customers, deals were struck and news passed on. Drummers and story tellers pounded out the drum history of the Dagombas . The white teacher who walked everywhere was greeted with friendly shouts and banter. Being part of a visible minority never felt so good.
What was happening? How did death, suffering and joy walk hand-in hand? I’m with David Kuhl on this. Ghanaians were not just resigned to death, they accepted death as part of life. Accepting death strips it of fear and frees us to embrace life.
The last time I saw Adisah she was sitting on the floor of her one-room home teasing cotton with her right hand onto hand-held spindle that she twirled in her left. She smiled and greeted me as always and then announced that she was spinning the thread that would be woven to make her burial shroud. May I have her courage when my death draws near.
