LIVES
Oseloka Obaze*
Rosemary Omuluzua Obaze
Mother,
Today,
Surely, it is very difficult to speak about a dearly departed mother in the
past tense. How does one do so for
a living mother, mentor, teacher, confidant, critic, friend, and admirer?
Similarly, how could I ever bestow her with accolades when such
accolades do not fittingly belong to the uttered and written words, as much as
they are etched in my eternal memory and the rich legacy she bequeathed to her
posterity. There is one certainty,
however, as a noble sage once uttered, “From now, everything will be different
and nothing will ever be the same.” That is the truth. However, this venture may
well be the desirable catharsis that snares a mourner away from the paralysis of
a deeply profound loss.
Mother, Rosemary Omuluzua Obaze,
also known as “Mama Chio” was a
simple, gracious, and loving person.
I could have sworn I knew her well. And I did. What I did not realize fully,
until now, was how many lives she touched in her lifetime and what a great
person she was to others, beyond being for me and my siblings, mother, friend,
mentor, and matriarch. There were many things we took for granted!
Placing Mom in perspective is easier now. Emails from two friends, a priest who knew Mom well and called her mother; and another from an old schoolmate, who never met her, but knew her vicariously through me, spoke volumes. Of her, Fr. John Ugobueze remarked, “She has left great memories so that her death is not like one who is completely out of existence, but one simply out of this world.”
And Dr. Jerry Ogbudimkpa observed:
“We count ourselves blessed because we were lucky to receive and
have in our midst (CKC Old Boys Association) one of her children. Honestly, she
extended her personality and gift of life through you to us and we as
association benefited and still enjoy your charisma and the desire to excel
through hard work and devotion to duty. She raised you and your siblings to
love, care and give - she was that great.”
Many more accolades have since
followed, but perhaps the mere fact that well over 2,500 people attended her
funeral in my native hometown, Ochuche Umuodu in Ogbaru LGA, Nigeria and that
three Catholic Bishops and sixty priests officiated at the funeral mass told the
rest of the story – of this simple live turned magnificent. (See
The
Obazes Bury Their Matriarch)
However, who was this woman whom I
called mother and many called by her sobriquet “Mama Chio”?
Mom,
was 37 days past her 81st birthday, when she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine
cancer on
Mrs. Rosemary Omuluzua Obaze, (nee Egonu) was born on 6th October, 1928 at
Iyienu, Ogidi, to Henry Chukwuma Egonu of Ossomala, and Cecelia Ogbenyeanu
Egbuna of Onitsha. Despite opportunities to pursue career choices in nursing or
medicine, she opted to study education under the watchful eyes of nuns of the
Holy Child Order. She attended Holy
Child Convent School, Calabar and, in 1949, she entered the Holy Rosary College
(HRC) Enugu, a teachers’ training school for her High Elementary Education
Certificate course. In school, she was responsible for the daily upkeep of the
College Principal’s Office, where she proved her dependability, people’s skill,
and thoroughness. On graduation, she pursued a teaching career until her
retirement as a School Principal in 1980.
After two decades of occasional visits to the U.S., the desire to be near
to 11 of her 13 grandchildren compelled her to move to the United State in 2004.
An educationist, Mrs. Obaze taught in ten different parochial and public schools
in former Eastern Nigeria from 1950 to 1980.
She served as Tutor and eventually as Headmistress at various Catholic
Schools including St. Bonaventure School, Nimo; Holy Rosary School, Abagana;
St. Vincent School Ogidi; St. John’s School Onitsha; St. Peter’s School Agulueze-Chukwu in Aguata; St. Michael’s School Central Annang; Urban County
Council School, Umuahia; Local Government School Uzuakoli; and Immaculate
Heart School, Onitsha. A descendant
of a ranking public service officer in the British colonial government in
Nigeria, she and her husband were dedicated public servants. Naturally, four of
her six children followed her example as public servants.
Yet, as a teacher, Mom’s reach and influence was infinite.
On 26 December 1952, she married the late Mr. Anthony Chukwuweike Anioko Obaze,
a senior civil servant, at Basilica of Holy Trinity, Onitsha. Her late husband
served as the Chief Executive Officer of various county governments; Onitsha,
Ogidi, Aguata, Central Annang, Umuahia, and Uzuakoli before his demise during
the Nigerian civil war on 25th December 1969. Their blissful seventeen-year
marriage was blessed with six children, three boys and three girls, Winnie, Oseloka, Ifeoma, Benny, Dubem, and Chio.
Those children, in turn, produced 13 beautiful and gifted grandchildren.
Mrs. Obaze received various public, social, religious and community awards and
recommendations in her lifetime. She also received several Papal Blessings for
her work for the Church. She was an active member of the Ladies of the Knight of
St. Mulumba. She was President of Catholic Women’s Organization (CWO), at St.
Mary’s Parish, Umuodu, a post she held for eleven years; and Patron of the St.
Anthony’s League in the same Parish, and Co-Chair of the St. Mary’s Church
Building Fundraising Committee in her hometown.
Mrs. Obaze spent a greater part of her retirement mobilizing resources for the
building of a new church in her hometown, Umuodu, and canvassing for the station
to become a full-fledged parish with its own pastor. In 2005, her aspirations
were realized when St. Mary’s Parish, Umuodu was established in the Onitsha
Archdiocese and Rev. Fr. Paul Ejikeme was assigned there as the first pastor.
The old church built in the early 1930s has been fully renovated, a new parish
rectory completed, and a new church is under construction, thanks largely to the
vision and industrious fundraising efforts by Mrs. Rosemary Obaze and her
colleagues in the Parish Council, CWO, and St. Anthony’s League. Until her
death, she remained an active member of St. Mary’s Parish Umuodu, and the
Sacred Heart Parish, Onitsha, the city where she retired and still maintained a
home. In the five years she lived in the United States, she had a notable presence
The
Catholic Community of St. James,
in Woodbridge, NJ, where on 2 January 2010, many US-based friends,
well-wishers, and twelve priests gathered to bid her a final farewell.
As a teacher, Mom never stopped
teaching. However, if she had one
forte, it was her abiding faith in God’s unconditional love and the power of
prayers. I once witnessed how from her sick bed she turned the table to minister
to the chaplain who had visited her at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, New Brunswick, NJ, prompting the lady who was close to tears to
graciously ask, “Who is the chaplain here?” before admitting that she had
learned much from her encounter with Mom. It may not be symbolic, but Mom
elected to die on Christmas day 2009, exactly forty years from Christmas day
1969, the day Dad and the love of her life died. Another priest, a Catholic
theologian, attributed that coincidence to the “law of synchronicity,” and a
sign of God’s irrefutable presence in her life. In his tribute titled
“
She Died As She Lived,”
a dear family friend, Fr. Joe Ben Onyia, summed
up mum’s life and departure thus: “The silence of her departure will be most
deafening. But then consoling is the fact that she died as she lived.”
The death of a mother is an utterly strange event. Yet, it has a salutary value
when it marks the transition from a life well lived to eternal glory.
But the strangeness lingers in cherished memories and in the fact that
the departed seems to live and linger –with a presence of one who might have
just traveled briefly. I guess that is the power of an enduring and touching
personality. This much I know: beyond our sorrowful circumstance and sense of
profound loss, a listless palpable strangeness lingers. As a close friend
observed, it is a time “when a family [..] becomes spiritually replenished upon
the death of one of its foremost, along with the feelings of sadness but not
despair.” However, the greatest
challenge of losing a matriarch, family beacon, and cornerstone is to transcend
the pain and yet uphold the deceased’s legacy.
Meanwhile, amidst the pains and confusion, Mom lives in us. True to kind, Mom’s
wish was to end her life’s journey where it began: to be buried in the rural
Nigerian homestead, where God had in His Infinite wisdom placed her originally.
That wish was met unconditionally.
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Mr. Oseloka Obaze, an aspiring writer, is a founding member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was second among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004. His novel, “Happy Eulogy” will be published soon. He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby. © Copyright 19 March 2009.
Joe
Ben Onyia
In Honor of a Bastion of Love