Stay with Jesus!!!...and those were his final words as I left his bed side last Sabbath. KD praised God even to the very last minute.

I can still remember the medley of hymns we sang together and how he had wished we’d do same at Beulah church on his return. My eyes are heavy, my body is shaken but I can hear him still, as he sings the last stanza of SDA Hymnal 461(Be still my soul) in high tenor, even on his sick bed whilst Ben, Joe and Theo joined in the chorus.

“Be still my soul, the hour is hast’ning on,

When we shall be forever with the Lord.

When disappointment, grief and fear are gone

Sorrow forgot, loves purest joys restored.                                                                                                     

Be still my soul, when change and tears are past,                                                                                     

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last”  

This is exactly what I wrote at the news of the death of a bosom friend. I haven’t quite witnessed the death of many close relatives as some people may have unfortunately experienced but this is one death I will never forget as long as I live.

First, this was a friend I had known for many years. Even though he attended the Royal school at sofoline; Prempeh college, whilst I was privileged to be amongst the very elect who attended Opoku Ware School, we did not fail to seize every opportunity to tell each other, why our schools where better than theirs.

Secondly, I was part of a carefully selected team who planned his wedding some months before his death. I remember clearly how he would take his time to explain why he needed a certain kind of ceremony and why he preferred a succinct homily to a crusade-type sermon at his wedding.  Even the kind of pastors to officiate were carefully selected

Thirdly, we were in the same church and our common interest in music was unfaltering.

Just 3 days ago, I led a mini acappella choir to sing at his bedside at the hospital and here I am today, struggling to live with the obvious fact that he’s no more.

I haven’t experienced death before - may be the closest I came to, was what I wrote in my first published article some months ago; Jesus vs Kwaku fri; the experience of a local traveler:

But I have tried to understand what goes on in the mind of the dead just before one dies.

If my experience in the airplane is anything to go by, then the thoughts that comes to one’s mind –just before death is anything but pleasant.

The Bible says in Ecclesiastics 9:5…’’ For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten’’

Whilst this is wholly true, I sometimes wonder if moments before people die-especially in an obvious case of a plane heading for a crash or drowning in the water body, they are able to think of the fact that they are about entering into an eternal oblivion and in the next moment they would be no more.

As our people say, a goat’s frown cannot stop it from being taken to the market. In the same way does our deliberate choice not to this discuss this obvious truth of life, save us from our journey to the grave.

According to Jerome P. Crabbe; dying is like getting audited by the IRS….something that only happens to other people ... until it happens to you.

It’s true that we are all not going to be translated like Enoch nor live up to the age of Methuselah.

As the saying goes,’there’s no virgin in the maternity ward’…neither is anyone of us immune to the man in the long black coat.

Death is a reality in which all human beings believe. However, it is also a reality which most of us like to keep out of our minds.

On June 3, 2015, Ghana experienced the most tragic of all disasters, at least, in my life time. Over 150 people were consumed by flood water supported by fire. This tragedy, though unprecedented, like any news in Ghana, is fast leaving our minds and hearts.

In fact, many of us have moved on to the next headline – we are rather interested in who next is joining the parliamentary race but is not able to spell p-a-r-l-i-a-m-e-n-t-a-r-y correctly, what next has the doctors said in their dealings with a resuscitated dead goat, which group is in line to go picketing around the ministry  of finance as a sure way of getting their salary areas paid and many other juicy headlines.

But I want you to pausea second and think of what might have gone through the minds of all those who were consumed by the flood and fire on June 3.

Like us, almost all of them had very wild plans for the future.

At least I know of the pastor who had just returned from a missionary training abroad and was due to go back to meet his family in Tamale, that University student who was only returning to school after a short visit at home, those Ridge hospital nurses who were on their way to work on the night shift and many others who had just closed from work around the central business district and were only heading home from work to meet their families.

I have always tried to picture them as they stood in what looked like a normal rain and later realizing that their feet were gradually being soaked as the water slowly approached their knee level.

Here, they decide to move onto a higher ground as all the other grounds become sinking sands. There also the water follows them, and amidst the feeling of distress and anxiety, there they see a school girl swimming afloat the water body that just formed around them. She had just been drowned by the flood.

In their haste to find a safe haven, two of them just slipped and it looks like, they have also been overawed by the flood. At this stage, that business executive who just spoke to his wife and also shared a joke with his last kid, doesn’t seem to remember the actual time he dropped his bag that had his phone and other personal  belongings in the rain water.

What looked like a groupthink with strong cohesion and unison has just turned out to be jungle fight with everyone fighting for him/herself and struggling for independent survival. There are scenes of fully loaded vehicles that have just been toppled over, a lot more lifeless bodies are seen moving afloat the waters and suddenly there seem to a spark of fire at the far end.

It looks like the fire is quite a distance, but like objects in a mirror;it’s really closer than it appears. There it is, coming with the speed of light and before the group on the higher ground decides to move away – that drivers mate who held tightly to the daughter of the lady taken in the flood, has just been burnt into ashes by the raging fire.

Imagine being part of the higher ground team and seeing right before your eyes- floods supported by fire, killing and maiming some of your group members without recognition. And there you stand, as the fire approaches, now plentifully aware that you’re almost next in line and that the conversation you just had with Junior and your wife was the very last.

That moment when you know death has opened the door and it’s by your side.

History has it that, when King CharlesII of England suffered an apoplectic fit and was convinced that he wasn’t going to survive after almost a week, he arranged for a Roman catholic priest to be brought to his bed side and asked for a special prayer after which he converted to become Roman catholic and then gave up the ghost.

That was King Charles, he was privileged to have hard a bit of time on his hands and therefore was able to achieve what he had desired but how about all the people who died in the flood and fire. The only time they had was that moment between when the fire had finished the next person and it was their turn.

What difference or changes would they have made in their lives, if they knew they were not going to survive in the next hour?

In Luke 16:19-31, Christ shared a parable of a rich man and Lazarus and gives us a bit of insight into what goes on in the mind of the dead.

The moral of that story is that, we live right whilst we have life lest our thoughts after we are dead can only remain in our heads as there will be no more time to do that which we had planned to do.

As I was almost rounding up this article, I got a call that another good friend has just lost the mum – and here am I thinking again, what could be going on in the mind of the dead?

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Sammy Asare / Accra/ August 2015.

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