Painful passing of a dad has a lesson for you, sons and daughters

May ye, o, sons, and daughters, take a serious note of the advice herein stated. It will be well with you if you did heed the advice coming to you because of an encountered personal experience when I paid one of my best friends a visit when holidaying in Ghana in March this year.

This friend, now late Mr…..(name withheld), just passed on Sunday, 23 June 2024, had decided to proceed to Ghana to return no more to the UK about fifteen years ago.

I maintained telephone contact with him and did pay him three visits in different years, spending a few days a time in his hometown, when I went to Ghana on holiday.

During this year’s visit to deliver medication purchased from London to him in his hometown, I found him seriously taken ill, hardly able to walk even a few steps. I will not describe any further about his illness.

However, what made my eyes well up with tears was when he narrated to me how wickedly his own biological son staying in the house in the next room to his, was treating him.

He would be screaming amid weeping in pains calling for someone to fetch him water from the fridge in the kitchen or take money to go and buy him food. His son would be in his room, totally ignoring the father’s calls for help.

From his narrations regarding the callous treatment being meted to him by his son, the father confided to me how he had been compelled or influenced to amend his testament (will) of which I totally agreed with him.

A father or mother may be influenced by how kindly or wickedly you treat them, especially when they are taken terminally ill when writing their testament. This is the advice to you sons and daughters.

In the case of my deceased friend, some people may have a shock of their life when his testament is read after his funeral.

I will not make any further disclosures but will simply advise our sons and daughters to show us more love especially when we are taken ill if they want to become beneficiaries of our will.

I will in future come back to reveal more details about my friend’s bitter experience at the hands of his own son.

The fact that your father could not take you abroad does not merit such wicked treatment from you.

The cripple thinks he is doing his mum by dragging his buttocks on the floor but indeed, he is doing himself, so an Akan proverb goes. You will end up losing out as a son or daughter if you maltreat your father or mother in their dying days.

Mr……, may your soul rest in perfect peace. May the flame of our friendship continue to glow even in your passing.

“Damirefa due, due, due ne amanehunu”

A word to the wise is enough.