Lockdown and my in-law’s funeral

My husband’s mother died tragically in February. She was returning from a funeral that happened in their hometown when the car she was in had an accident. She didn’t die on the spot. She spent two weeks in the hospital with a broken arm and leg but in February 2020, she died from internal bleeding. She was 55 years old.

As the only child of his mother, he had to go through all the troubles alone putting things together to give his mother a befitting burial. It wasn’t easy for him. I watched him going up and down every day until it was too late for him to even eat something.

Finally, everything was put in place for the funeral to happen on the 20th of March, 2020. On the 15th of March, the president appeared on TV banning all social gatherings because of the spread of the Coronavirus. That evening, my husband stayed awake all night thinking of what next to do. For the first time in a while, I saw him crying not because of his mother’s death but because of something beyond his control. He was a broken man

“Why is everything getting worse for mom’s funeral? Why?” He asked me. I told him, “Everything happens for a reason. Let’s trust in the Lord and his ways. It shall be well.”

He cried his heart out.

The next day he met with the family. They wanted the funeral to be put on hold until the ban was lifted but my husband said, “The longer we keep the body at the morgue the higher the price to pay. I don’t have much money to go through with that. Let’s bury her, she’ll understand.”

Most of the family members distanced themselves from the decision. The head of the family said, “Your mother made you who you are singlehandedly. The best you can do in return is to give him a befitting burial but you’re here thinking about money? Do you know how much your mother spent on you?” I know my husband. Deep down, he would have loved to wait but he had spent so much than he had. From mother’s hospital bills to morgue charges and so many other expenditures. He was drained.

So, on the 20th March 2020, at exactly 6am, the body was placed in a coffin and was silently carried to the cemetery for burial. I could count the number of people at the graveside; the pastor and four choristers and some other few family members.

Everything lasted for less than thirty minutes. They covered the grave and we left for the house.

A week later, I and my husband are home because there’s a lockdown.

Yesterday, he sat in front of the tv and flipped through one of the funeral booklets that got printed but were not used. He was reading the tribute he had written for his mother. I remember the sleepless night he spent trying to write a perfect tribute for but didn’t even get the time to read it to her. I couldn’t look at him twice. He was drowned in his own thoughts.

He is not the man he used to be. He had become a pale shadow of who he once was. Something is killing him, maybe how he buried his mom still haunts him. Nothing I tell him or do seems to work. Spending the next two weeks with him alone in this room is going to be a tough task but I pray he finds comfort in living and come back to enjoying life once again. He’s all I have.