On Vilomah

Years ago, an older colleague of mine lost her husband and a daughter in a terrible car accident. I recall her saying that although she was no longer a wife – she was a widow, she was still a mother. She still celebrated her daughter’s birthday and when anyone asked her how many children she had, she didn’t say two (to account for her two surviving children) but three. That really struck me.

More recently, I got chatting to a woman at a reception, and somehow the conversation veered to our families. I asked her if she had any children after she asked about mine, and she said yes. She had one child. It wasn’t until I asked what he did, that she told me that he’d been dead a while. Yet in everything she said before then, nothing hinted at the fact that he was dead.

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Nothing is as incomprehensible, as illogical perhaps, as the death of a child. Called a parent’s worst nightmare, it is so against the natural order of things that in some of our cultures, parents are not allowed to view the corpse of their children who pre-decease them.

That unnaturalness of the death of a child, in a world where death is inevitable, is most likely why a language like English that insists on precision has no universally accepted word to describe parents who’ve lost a child. There is widow (and therefore widower) which comes to English via a Sanskrit word that means ‘to empty,’ and there’s orphan, whose etymology can be traced to late Middle English via late Latin from the Greek word ‘orphanos’ which means  ‘a parentless child.’

However, to lose a child is not to be childless in the way that losing parents/spouses makes one parentless or spouseless. So, the English language (and our local languages as far as I know) struggle with finding a term for the parents of a dead child. In fact, the only word to be ever used in English for a parent who’s lost a child is a Sanskrit word, vilomah, which simply means ‘against the natural order.’ And this term, I’ve only ever seen in online articles. It hasn’t made its way into the dictionary yet, and many who hear it out of the context of the articles would probably have to google its meaning.

The death of a child has got to be the most crushing, the most devastating, the most light-sucking thing. And so when I saw Davido/Chioma/Ifeanyi trending about a week and a half ago, and realised why, I was sad on Davido and Chioma’s behalf.

Like many others, I’d seen the clip of little Ifeanyi dancing on his birthday just a week or so before he died. Often one to complain that there is an excess of content on social media and quick to delete forwarded WhatsApp/TikTok videos of whatever, I watched the clip of Ifeanyi several times, revelling in the joy of this child just enjoying music, unaware of what influence his own father wielded musically. I wondered if he’d become an entertainer in the future. I didn’t think that the next time his name or image would make its way into my social media world, it’d be for his death. It is heartbreaking. Utterly and sincerely.

Some folks complained that Nigerians were quick to mourn Ifeanyi because he was a celebrity’s child. To those people, I say biko have a heart. If the death of any child doesn’t move you, what will? Do you think that fame/wealth somehow makes one impervious to pain? You think Davido and Chioma are not hurting? You think they wouldn’t give up what they have to have their son back?

Those who mourned Ifeanyi’s death did so because he was in our (media) consciousness.   Others implied that Davido used his son to do juju. Clowns, the lot of them. I hope that none of this hateful nonsense made its way into the ears of the grieving family.

I never met Ifeanyi, I don’t know Chioma or Davido personally but I feel for them. I wish them and every family going through this sort of unimaginable loss the fortitude required to pick up their broken pieces and get out of bed to face a new day. Every day.