I Cannot Be Left Behind — A Eulogy
It was Christmas Eve. A traffic-congested Wednesday night in Accra. I had to hurry home. Tomorrow I’d probably have to take my little siblings out.
They’d been stuck at home for so many weeks because of COVID and I felt really sorry for them. I hadn’t been able to spend time with them at all because of the work we’re doing at Boxconn. Startups steal so much of your time.
Just as my Uber pulled up I got a text from my sister. It said: “Pray for Douglas Sarfo. He’s very sick and has been admitted at the hospital.”
Douglas is my cousin. In fact my “realest” cousin. I call him “realest” because he was always so blunt and honest. I’d met him just two days ago at a KFC Store where I was doing a bit of research. I hadn’t even seen him till he’d called me.
“Me Nua”, he’d said.
“Me Nua” translates to “My brother” and it’s funny how these were the exact same words he’d ended our last text conversation with on WhatsApp.
I turned around and there he stood, holding A KFC Bucket in his hands as he was about to sit in his car. He hugged me and I hugged him back.
“I’m sick, my brother. I just came back from the hospital and I’m headed home now.”, he said tiredly. We spoke for a few minutes after which he’d left.
I immediately re-routed the trip to the hospital where he was at. The traffic was really terrible, which of course was bad news for me and good news for my Uber driver.
At the hospital, he lay there calmly, his family around him while I went over to say hello. He sat upright a bit and smiled. I told him he’d get better and left a few minutes later.
Later that night I woke up at 2:30 am. And was told he’d passed away. Just like that.
They say we never really know what we have until it’s gone. I disagree.
Douglas was and is always a gem. The truth is, we always know what we have, we just never think we could ever lose it.
I remember us hanging around as kids. Me, my big brother, and him. Spraying water into each other’s faces with water pistols as we’d roamed about, as carefree as we could ever be. He was always so kind-hearted and high-spirited as always. I remember the sleepovers and video games.
There’s a picture on Douglas’ Instagram captioned “I cannot be left behind⚖️”
It is the inspiration for the title above this write-up.
I have tried to read meaning through most of his Instagram captions and that was the one that hit me hardest. I feel as though it has a lot of meaning.
In the photo, he’s in a red beach shirt and black denim shorts walking away with a grin on his face. He seems content.
I sometimes re-read our text messages or re-listen to the voice notes we once exchanged. And I also remember our 2 am video calls where we’d talk about life, fitness, and dogs. Yes, we both loved dogs.
When you lose someone you tend to question a lot of things in life. Very few things really matter. You realize how fickle life is. Then you start to prioritize who and what really matters. You rethink a lot of your decisions.
The people around you will never understand exactly what you’re going through. They won’t understand why your eyes look the way they do after a morning when everyone’s supposed to have had a good rest.
Or how your mind wanders when you’re in the middle of a meeting.
That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt. You cannot trick your mind to forget the pain.
I have shamelessly gone on a reading spree trying to find answers in books and articles about life and what happens after it. I know I’ll never find answers to some questions until I’m gone myself.
But it’s still worth getting to know what other people might think. It’s nice to be able to have multiple perspectives so you can discover what your own thoughts are and help clear up the mess in your head.
It’s been a couple of months since he passed and I almost never published this because of several reasons. I almost left it among the several other write-ups in my drafts.
But then I thought that the world deserved to know the wonderful person Douglas really was. He was just like you and I. 25 years old, ready to face life and all it had to offer.
On his WhatsApp “About”, it reads “Nothing comes easy, but in God we trust.”
