O, death, where is your sting?

I loved Emmanuel Oteh. Wholeheartedly. We met in the second year of university and hit the ground like buddies who had known each other since childhood. We shared our past experiences, empathized with the then present challenges and psyched up ourselves about the bright future. What three years we shared! Oteh was killed in a motor accident a few months to our graduation. 

One time, while growing up, a big black scorpion found its way into my parent’s bathroom. My dad, being the uncanny man, did not panic or kill it. Instead, he cut off its telson and stinger, then picked it up on his palm to prank my mom who was in the kitchen. To state it mildly, he scared the living daylight out of her. I am not sure that even today she has forgiven him for that prank. 

Stay with me. 

How do you deal with death? Many people do not so much as talk about it. For example, if a young wife tells her husband to write a will he’ll almost certainly think she’s wishing him dead so she can elope with another man with his properties. Parents and I think rightly so, shut down any words or sometimes even their own thoughts of death visiting their family with a firm, ‘God forbid!’ Me? I console myself by recalling the acronym, MR NIGER D. I learned it in Primary Five. My teacher called it the characteristics of living things. To refresh, M for Movement, R for Respiration, N for Nutrition, I for Irritability, G for Growth, E for Excretion, R for Reproduction and D for Death. I tell myself, death is just a part of life. And since I don’t bother about every other characteristic above the D, why bother about the D? That is my escapist way of dealing with death. What is yours? 

Even with this method, nothing prepared me for Oteh’s death. Nothing. I never thought of such a possibility. It was inconceivable. But it happened and its inevitability slammed-dunked my logic. I grievously mourned my friend until an acquaintance, in a bid to console me, said: “I am sorry to hear about your loss. I know it is hard on you. But, be strong. There is no sting in Oteh’s death.” 

I instantly understood what she meant. You see, Paul, in one of his long treatises, explained how death is not an end in itself but a portal into a realm with burst after burst of exuberance. He concluded by saying that death will be “swallowed up in victory.” It was after this that he asked the Legendary Question: “O, death, where is your sting?” 

Back to my uncanny father and his shaken wife. Although my mom was scared as hell at the live scorpion on my dad’s palm, he enjoyed a good laugh because he knew that since he had cut-off its telson and the stinger with it, the scorpion was just another harmless arachnid. He proved that scorpions are not dangerous. Their stingers are.  

Same with death. Death is not dangerous. Its stinger–sin–is. When sin is cut-off, death becomes just a harmless passageway. Just as a scorpion with its stinger can be a source of plentiful pain, death with sin is unimaginably painful. 

Whenever I read Paul’s Legendary Question “O, death, where is your sting?” I imagine death like a scorpion walking around without its stinger. It stills looks scary and acts in the same way its instincts tell it to. If I touch it it will strike at me thinking it is inflicting pain but I can look at it, smile like my dad and say, "Odeshi." Death without its sin-stinger can no longer leave me with irredeemable pain. And just as Oteh, we all will experience that last 'D' characteristic of living things, but because we are not living in sin, it strikes without inflicting pain, because, in our case, death has indeed been swallowed up in victory!

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