My Dad’s Life Fell Apart. When He Died, I Logged On To His Email And Made A Shocking Discovery.

Our father’s body lay on a plinth the color of gunmetal. He was covered by a simple white sheet up to his collarbone, above which his shaved head was supported by a stone headrest. Looking at him, it was as if his body had shrunk in tandem with his dissembling life. 

I shivered. The visitation room in Omega Funeral Home was as cold as a meat locker, while outside the rainy season had turned Lagos into a sauna. When I grabbed my brother Femi’s hand, I was reminded of the pain that flooded me when he called with the news of our father’s death. 

“Anike,” Femi started.

“I was just about to call you,” I began. “Anike,” Femi interrupted, firmer this time.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“Daddy passed away last night,” he said, “at 3 a.m.”

I asked nothing. I said nothing. I dropped my phone and slumped forward, burying my face in my hands. I felt pain so excruciating that I could not cry. 

Our father, Joshua Kayode Adepitan, had been hospitalized with a fever for one day and was dead the next due to a blockage in his colon, a condition we later found out was treatable. It had been only three months since I last saw my father, during my annual visit following the New Year.

For years I arranged for my father to fly out to visit me in the U.K. to attend celebrations and to spend time with me. However, the day before he was due to arrive, he would always call to cancel with excuses about some business deal in progress or warnings from his religious prophets, who warned him about his safety and urged him to stay home and fast. So instead I traveled to him.

After his death, Femi and I had flown from our respective homes in London to Lagos to oversee the daunting task of laying to rest a once accomplished and respected man who lost everything he loved and lived the last two decades of his life as a recluse in the darkening shadows of failure and disrepute.

“We will honor him with a traditional Yoruba funeral,” Femi said, trying to console me. “We will celebrate the man he once was.” 

My father was my hero growing up. He was a proud Yoruba man who clawed his way from obscurity and poverty in rural Nigeria to a life of success and respect. A natural storyteller, he commanded every room he walked into with his presence and delighted audiences with his wit. I loved listening to his tales of growing up in the colonial era, of winning scholarships to universities abroad, of meeting my British mother in Sweden, and his triumphant return home to set up two successful businesses and build a beautiful home in the affluent suburbs of Lagos. 

I cherished the times he let me accompany him to his furniture factory to inspect newly completed orders waiting to be delivered to offices and hotels. I loved how he took time to explain how to identify the different types of wood by the smell and the patterns etched into the grain or when he let me ride shotgun on his speedboat as he floored the engines along the Atlantic coast, and all the times he recounted my favorite story about his grandmother, who encouraged his ambition by telling him, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Our small family unit revolved around my father. He was our source of stability, security and fun. All I ever wanted was to be like my father.

After Nigeria’s economy collapsed under the strain of decades of military dictatorship, my father’s charter airline business was shuttered by the government, and his furniture business began to fail due to the sharp decline in demand. He stopped going to his office, playing squash at the Metropolitan Club, and traveling the world with our mother and their friends.

My father withdrew from the world, spending hours on the phone with faceless “business partners” over distant, crackling phone lines. Threatening strangers appeared at our gate at all hours of the day and night demanding money. Our mother, fearful of his new, suspicious business dealings, divorced him and fled the country, swiftly changing her name and severing all ties to him. Our father became a recluse, breaking off all contact with his large extended family and all his friends. By then, Femi and I were in our early 20s and studying abroad.