Dear GhanaWeb,
I don’t know where to begin. My hands are shaking as I type this.
For ten long years, I have carried a pain in my chest that has never left. I have been a widow, a single father, and a broken man.
Ten years ago, my wife left for work one morning and never came home. Her car was found abandoned near a beach in Accra. Her purse was inside. They searched the waters for a week.
They found nothing. No body. We had no choice but to accept that she was gone.
I had to tell our two children, then just 8 and 5 years old, that their mummy was never coming home. I have lived with their tears for a decade.
It all changed on Monday. I was coming back from the market when I saw a woman standing at my gate. Her back was to me, but something about her looked familiar; my heart started pounding for a reason I did not understand. When she turned around, I was shocked.
It was her. It was my wife.
But it wasn’t the wife I buried in my mind. She was older, thinner, her eyes were tired.
She came inside. She was crying. She told me a story that sounds like a bad Nollywood movie. She said she was overwhelmed back then.
The pressure of being a wife, a mother, her job… it was too much. She said she met a man who promised her a different life in Kumasi, a life without responsibility.
So she staged it. She abandoned her car by the water and just… left. She left me. She left her babies.
For ten years, she lived with this man. She said he became abusive. He took all her money, and then he abandoned her too.
Now she is sick. Now she has nowhere to go. And she is back. She said she is sorry. She is asking for forgiveness. She wants to see the children.
How do you forgive a ghost for choosing to be dead? How do I tell my children that the mother they have wept for for ten years simply found them too much to bear?
I am lost, and I am so angry. What do I do?
ID/EB
Also catch the latest episode of Talkertainment with Ghana’s most-sought-after MC/Hypeman, Kojo Manuel, below:
