One day, my mother will die
The sun will rise like it always does.
The birds will sing their morning songs.
Heaven will not fall. Hell will not stop burning.
The ocean will carry its waves—
as if she were never here.
As if the world didn’t shift beneath my feet.
As if my chest isn’t splitting open.
As if grief didn’t just take my hand and say,
“Come. We live here now.”
A Balloon in The Sky
When it comes to writing, consistency has escaped me this year. It’s like a helium balloon that’s drifted too far into the sky. I can still see it—just barely.
I remember the moment before it slipped.
The ribbon.
My fingers.
Me, running on my favourite beach in Lagos.
Happy. Light. Free.
But it’s all in my head now.
The balloon is almost gone, swallowed by the clouds.
The wind has carried my urge to write into the horizon.
I am doing too many things, and the weight of them is burying me.
There’s been no time to write.
There is no time.
But today, I'm here.
Solemnity came to visit me last week.
She didn’t call. She didn’t knock.
She barged in—like a pregnant woman who knows she won’t make it to the toilet, but runs anyway, feeling the urine start to leak.
Urgent. Messy. Uninvited.
She looked me in the eye and said:
“You’ll get a call one day.
Someone will say, ‘Your mother has died.’
And there will be nothing—nothing—you can do.”
She tilted her head, reminding me,
“You’re Muslim abi? There’s a high chance she’ll be buried before you even find a KLM flight to Nigeria.”
My mother will die.
And they will put her in the ground without me.
I’ve been sitting with this for weeks now, letting it breathe instead of blocking it like I usually do.
My mother’s death terrifies me.
I am fine with my own death.
Even my father’s.
I never allow myself to sit with the thought of my siblings dying.
But the idea of my mother dying feels unbearable.
I know it will break me.
I know I will carry it forever.
It’s not a matter of if.
Only when.
Aunty Jummy
When I was four, all I wanted was to be my mother, Olájùmòké Taibat Òdúkòyà (nee Ajísegírí).
Aunty Jummy.
Aunty Jummy taught biology to young girls at Eva Adelaja Secondary School, a large government school that felt like a little world of its own. My siblings and I were still in primary school, so once we closed, we would walk to Eva Adelaja and spend our time climbing trees, running, playing, and waiting for my mother to finish her classes.
Eva Adelaja wasn’t just a school—it was like a mini town. The hostel stretched far, and behind it lay a football field. The classrooms stood scattered in parallel lines. Biology labs, food and nutrition studios, and teachers’ offices nestled quietly between them. There was even a market where we bought lunch - rice and beans, fish and potatoes, guguru and epa. Sometimes women hawked donkwa, their voices calling us in the midday heat.
I loved Eva Adelaja. I loved the boarding school students who doted on me, calling me my mother’s “carbon copy,” feeding me cornflakes, and offering me cabin biscuits.
But more than the attention, I loved my mother. And every time someone asked what I wanted to be in the future, I answered without hesitation: a teacher.
Not because I particularly loved teaching or knew what it entailed, but because I loved my mother. And to me, everything she did was sacred.
I didn’t understand why, but I wanted to become everything she was—even the things that made no sense. She had athlete's foot, white and peeling between her toes, something she always complained about. In my childish mind, it was a mark of beauty. A mark of her. And so, I also wanted athlete’s foot.
In my eyes, she was God. And though my siblings will fight me on this forever, I will always believe—I was God’s favorite child.
Tai
My mother did not have an easy life. But her smile—wide and full of light—is the first thing you notice when you meet her. A burst of joyful, restless energy. Always singing. Always dancing. Always happy to be here. Always happy to extend herself for others—even during the seasons when life gave her every reason not to.
This is where I get my soul from. My laughter. My light. My ridiculous “always happy” energy. It’s from my mother’s personality. She’s the owner; I am the owner too. I do not know which ancestor passed this down to us.
But every time I think about my mother dying, I’m struck by the cruel fact that one day, her happy spirit will be no more. Buried in the ground. And the world will go on, never knowing the sound of her laughter again. Never seeing her spontaneous dancing again.
I don’t want this to be a sad story about my mother. But I recently realized—I don’t know all of her. I know my mother. But who was she before she became my mother? Before I knew her as Olájùmòké? Before life bent her into someone we could lean on?
So I’ve decided to make an effort to truly get to know my mother. And I’ve begun by asking her questions about her younger self.
When my mother was a young girl, everybody called her Tai—a monosyllabic shortened version of her Arabic name, Taibat.
My mother was always the smartest in whatever class she was in. But once she finished Form 3, her father—rest his soul—said she had to go to Madrasah - Islamic school. She was his first child, and no child of his was going to be lacking in Islamic knowledge. And so, at a young age, she was shipped off to begin Madrasah in Ìbàdàn.
She stayed diligently, learning about religious teachings, and one day, she met with the Alfa’s wife and convinced her to begin a small business.
Ejé kin ma báa yín t’èko. Let me help you sell èko*.
Ìyáàmí n tà resì. My mother sells rice.
Mo mán báwon kiri. Back home, I used to hawk for my mother.
Ìyá ìyáàmí èko ni wón tà. My grandmother sells èko.
Mo dè mán báwon na kiri. I used to hawk for her too.
Șé e fé ta èko ni? Do you not want to sell èko?
That single conversation changed the trajectory of Tai’s life. She began helping the Alfa’s wife hawk in the market. Little Tai, walking under the hot Ìbàdàn sun on the dusty streets, calling out to people to buy eko to eat with their moimoi.
One day, during her regular hawking, she heard someone shout, “Èkó Òfé! Èkó Òfé!” Free education! Free education! The announcement was coming from a truck with an Obáfémi Awólówò banner.
Obáfémi Awólówò was the first Premier of the Western Region of Nigeria, and he introduced free primary education for all, and free healthcare for children in the Western Region. And my mother benefited.
She immediately walked up to the gathering of people broadcasting the news of free education in the open market and registered herself. She was placed in Form 6. My mother was always smart and witty. Skipping classes is a thing in Nigeria—if you seem smart enough, you’d be placed in a higher class. So even though her last class was Form 3, she was placed in Form 6. That year, she finished Form 6 and wrote the secondary school admission exam—to the dismay of her Alfa, who believed girls should not be educated. And she passed.
But she was still in Ìbàdàn—miles away from her parents, who lived in Ìlẹ Olúji, Ondo State—and there were no phones, no way to contact them, and no money. So, she waited, like good daughters did then, for her father to summon her home.
He eventually did, when my grandma realized my mother’s age mates in Ìlẹ Olúji were starting secondary school, and she brought it to my grandfather:
Omo mí ye kó ti bèrè ilé èkó girama.
My child should have begun grammar school.
And so my grandfather sent for his daughter. She went back home and resumed at Gboluji Grammar School in Ìlẹ Olúji, topping her classes year in and year out, and rising to become Head Girl.
Graduating from secondary school was a big feat for my mother. Back in those days, it was almost the equivalent of earning a BSc. People graduated, job hunted, and then got their workplaces to sponsor their university education. And that was my mother’s plan.
She did a ton of interviews and got super excited when British Airways said, “Yes, we would like you to work with us.” So, in a different timeline, my mother would have become an air hostess—but she didn’t.
My grandmother said, over her dead body. Because in those days, culturally, being an air hostess was akin to being a prostitute. “Respectable girls” did not fly. “Respectable girls” stayed on the ground.
And so, she stayed.
Went to Bayero University.
Met my father—a meeting I can never stop thinking of as an unfortunate event.
She married him, and his misogyny pushed her into teaching—the least rewarding pathway to accumulating wealth in Nigeria. The easiest opportunity for her to be financially abused.
But yes, this is not a sad story about my mother.
Because even in teaching, she bloomed.
èko*: a smooth cornmeal pudding wrapped in a leaf and enjoyed by itself or eaten as a side among the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria.
Alhaja Òdúkòyà
When my mother dies, I will hold onto all the ways she turned bitter waters sweet.
I’ll remember when she won the Lagos State Teachers’ Merit Award, as I stood there right next to her—proudly—my eldest sister and youngest brother beaming in front of the cameras. She came home with her prize: a Kia Rio, eyes gleaming with pride.
When my mother dies, I will remember the children.
So many of them, drifting in and out of our house, calling her Mummy.
Some were family. Some were strangers. She taught them all. Raised them all.
Our living room, a makeshift classroom. WAEC preparation books everywhere.
At any hour of the day, biology class could begin.
I will remember biology terms like “glomerular filtrate.”
And I will never forget the skeletal system.
I still look at the scapula of a chicken with childlike excitement—
Because I knew almost all the bones from a very young age,
Thanks to my mother quizzing us while we cut up chicken to make stew.
“What bone is this?”
“What is this organ called?”
I knew biological terms even before I understood what biology meant.
She made me fall in love with the subject, even though I never really needed it once adulthood came.
My mother didn’t have much.
But somehow, she was always giving.
And when she dies, that giving will not stop.
I like to believe it will live on—in all the people she gave to.
In the children she ensured got through their education.
In the kids who are now adults, with their own kids and their own families across the world—Kids my mother taught, helped, and nurtured in some way.
Even after my mother dies, I will always be filled with pride whenever someone responds to my Instagram story and says: "Are you Alhaja Òdúkòyà’s daughter? You look so much like her. She taught me in year so-and-so, in school so-and-so. She was an amazing woman."
I will always be proud of you, Mummy.
The Day My Mother Dies
The day your mother dies, Oládoyin, let yourself feel the full length of your feelings.
Do not insult her with that traumatic response of pushing all your sadness under the carpet.
Cry.
Pray.
Film.
Break.
Write.
Cry some more.
Shout.
Sleep.
Then maybe, as the weeks go by, as the ache stops consuming your entire existence—
Maybe you’ll be able to sing: “Oládoyin, tó ń bí wọ́n nínú, tó ń f’ọwọ́ l’ọ́rí…”
Your voice might break, but how else would you hear hers?
The voice she used to sing that song to you during hours and hours on the phone?
The month my mother dies, regret might visit me.
I might wish I had never given my eldest sister the short boubou. The one I made for myself from my mother’s old wine Asoòkè gèlè. I will wish I had it. I will wish I had anything—Something physical to hold onto. To hold her still.
But… it will not be enough.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.
Maybe this is for my future self.
When my mother dies, this story will still be alive on the internet.
And maybe—just maybe—my future self will find comfort in it.
Until that day when my mother dies, I will live.
I will make new memories of her beautiful soul.
I will ask her tons of questions about who she was
Before she ever became my mother.
I will travel home as often as I can afford,
And spend so much time with her—loving her,
Reminding her that life might have been cruel,
But maybe having a daughter
So similar to her,
Yet so thankfully different from her,
Makes it worth it.
And on that day when she dies—
When heaven does not fall and the birds still sing,
When hell’s fire does not quench and the waves still crash—
I will remember her.
And I will find a reason to smile still.
One week ago, I wrote this as a post. I didn’t say why, but anyone who saw it would have guessed.
This is the grief that birthed this story.
“The older I get, the more I see the beauty in having someone you can cry around.
To fully break in their presence.My friends’ parents are dying.
And we are grieving from oceans away.
In a way, we know—today it’s them, tomorrow it will be us.We will most likely miss our parents’ deaths.
They’ll be put in the ground while we are all the way over here.”
My dear friend lost his mother.
And suddenly, the world tilted.
Life stopped making sense.
As I let myself sit with the truth—that one day, it will be me—
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
About how hollow the world must feel now.
You can hear the weight in his voice.
The quiet ache behind his “I’m just there.”
Grief sits in the pauses.
In the silence after a sentence.
In the places where words used to live.
How do you comfort someone whose mother is gone?
Maybe you don’t.
Maybe you just sit beside them, surrounded by the sadness.
Offer your presence like a steady hand on a shaking back.
A reminder that though life may never make full sense again,
They will never have to face it alone.
You will always be there for them.
You’ll stay.
You’ll always be there.
For everyone who has lost someone dear,
I hope you find someone who stays with you in the deep moments.
Someone who will hold your hand when words are too heavy.
Someone who will sit beside your grief without trying to fix it.
I hope this story gives you something to cling to—
I don’t know what it will be.
Maybe a feeling.
Maybe a whisper.
Maybe just a quiet reminder that you are not alone.
But whatever it gives you,
I hope it finds you gently.
I wish you ease.
I wish your heart peace.
I hope your memories stay warm.