I know this might sound weird but I think I have found a way to connect to the dead. I had always been a happy child, even in my early teens. I was always the first to break the ice and first to laugh at the dryest jokes. I was quite a handful and the boys just couldn't get enough of me, i was strict about them though. Suddenly i changed, but not without good reason; a little over eleven months ago, my aunt died. Aunt Jane was my best friend. She was mom's youngest sister and had been living with us since I was five. Though she was older by just two years I called her aunt. She died after six days in a coma, she was in an accident on her way back from school, the very day I turned sixteen. She was buried in a graveyard fifteen minutes from our house. UME was two weeks after she died. Though I aced my WAEC & NECO exams, I missed my JAMB cut-off mark by just a stroke. After Jane died, I kept visiting her grave. I often took a mat along and sat on it to meditate, read and have picnics all by myself. After the first two months or so, I knew that it was no longer Jane that brought me to the graveyard but the peace I felt each time I went there. People were beginning to think I wasn't normal but I did not care. Before I knew it, I started creating stories about why and how some of the other dead people had died. My stories were so good that I became impressed with my own creativity. One day, during one of my saturday noons reading at my favorite hanging-out spot, I noticed a lady go to one of the graves and drop flowers. That wasn't the first time I had seen that lady at that particular grave. She was there just staring at the headstone. In a flash I remembered the story I had made up for the dead woman. Several minutes later, I heard her sobbing. I dont where the courage came from, but it came, and the next thing I knew, I was asking the sobbing lady, "what happened?". Surprisingly, she received my question well and she started talking.
Throughout the time she spoke, I couldn't help but stare at her mouth. I didn't know if she noticed, I didn't really care. When she was through she said "I have to go now", I managed to say "bye". Guess what...yes, you guessed right; her story coincided with mine(the one I made up), the only thing that I got to learn from her was the names of some of the people involved. Trust me, I was scared; I just had to leave that place. I got up and ran; I could have sworn that I ran faster than Usain Bolt ever had. I was so fast that the normal fifteen minutes journey home was reduced to five minutes. That night, I got really sick; it was the worst fever I had ever had and it lasted two days. I made up my mind never to go back to the graveyard.
After much contemplation, I decided to put down the story of the dead woman as fiction without adding or removing any detail, just the way I had created it and the just the way Sandra, the dead woman's daughter had narrated it...
