“My Grave Will Be By My Wife’s” – Grieving Ray Ekpu

By Gideon Njoku

Accomplished Journalist, Mr Ray Ekpu, who lost his wife last Wednesday in a highbrow Lagos Hospital, says he will prepare his own grave alongside his wife’s so that anytime he is called home by God, he will be laid to rest by the side of his beloved and devoted wife.

Not a few people had thought that Mr. Ekpu, who has lived most of his adult life in Lagos, and  literally “a Lagos boy”, would bury his wife in Lagos as do a number of people.

But when the issue was broached during an informal random discussion with him, a very devastated Ekpu swiftly ressponded: “How can I? My wife is going home. She will be buried in my compound. I am preparing a final resting place for two of us. Our resting places will be by each other. So, when my time comes, I will be buried by her side.”

Mrs Uyai Ray-Ekpu, who retired from the  Centre for Management Development in 2021 as an Acting  Director passed Wednesday, April 21, on discharge from hospital, a few days after what had been assumed was a successful hernia surgery.

Lamenting his wife’s death, the grieving husband said it was sudden. “She was okay in the house. To make sure everything went well after her surgery, we hired a Registered Nurse who was to be paid N250,000 a month to guide her with her medications and other things until her full recovery.

“On the faithful day, I stepped out to buy diesel for our generator so, having just come back from hospital, she would feel no discomfort over the public power supply’s erratic performance.Shortly after I left the house, our first daughter, who had come visiting, called me and said ‘come quick, come quick’. I rushed back, and my wife was throwing up. We called the Surgeon who performed the surgery. And he said to take her immediately to Duchess Hospital, Ikeja. We did. They took her in immediately as an emergency case, put oxygen, everything. To my shock, within 45 minutes, one of the Doctors came to me and said ‘sorry, she has passed’.

”I was unable to digest that. I was confused. Nothing registered. And in that state, I reacted like an illiterate. I asked the Doctor, ‘What is she passed? What do you mean by she passed? I paused and asked: By that, do you mean she is dead. And he said ‘yes’. Calmly, I said okay, let me see her. And they took me to her. I saw her, and truly, my wife was dead.

“I asked my wife, so after all these years, after all we had been through together, is this what you want? Is this how you will leave me? Is this how you want to leave me. There was no response. Then, I broke down and wept like a baby.

“My wife was a good woman. A good wife. She stood by me through thick and thin. In all I passed through in my career. She stood by me. My detention and prison periods. She never wavered. She never complained. And now, she left me. Just like that, with our three children now settled in their own homes.”

Ekpu and his wife have three children, two females and one male. Two live outside Nigeria and one lives comfortably in Lagos. There are also blessed with six grandchildren.