By Onimisi Alao
The passing on of Vilian Murray Saturday evening brought to my consciousness how sudden death can seem to the neighbour of the deceased.
Vilian lived in Yola Town while I live in far off Jimeta, so we were not neighbours in the sense of being next door buddies, but you are someone's neighbour when you are close to the someone enough to be aware of a few things about him or her.
I had been on a delegation to see Vilian earlier in the week of her tragic passing. The Deputy Governor's Press Crew to which she belonged had arranged to go and see her.
I had told leader of the team and Chief Press Secretary to the Deputy Governor, Hussaini Hammangabdo, that I wished also to see how Vilian was doing
So, when members of the crew left for the visit, in the afternoon of Tuesday October 31, I was with them.
I had been dismayed to notice how lean Vilian was, but nothing of the leanness prepared me for what happened in the evening of Saturday, November 4.
Yes, there had been signs during the visit, including her leanness and her apparent inclination to lie down rather than maintain a sitting position while her visitors remained with her in the sitting room, but death four days after that visit? No!
The shocking news of her death made me realize, sadly, that even as she seemed quite okay on the day of our visit, Vilian was facing a deeper fight over her health than was known to anyone else.
I think now that despite her own feelings as dictated by the effect her illness was having on her, her occasional smiles must mean that only God could have seen death coming.
The supplements and prayers that I was told she was using would have assured her that she would be fine after a while.
And I am one of her well-wishers who had believed in the efficacy of prayers as the answer to the illness that she was contending with.
When I had first heard about her situation a little over a week back and the term 'liver cirrhosis' was mentioned, I had little idea what it meant. I checked the internet and got to understand, with a depressing alarm, that cirrhosis only becomes liver cirrhosis as we know it when the condition has advanced to a difficult-to-manage state. (It started to be said after her passing that she might actually have succumbed to complications from a surgery she once had, but whatever the cause was counts for nothing now.)
It occurred to me that intense prayers were needed. I immediately thought of New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declaration (NSPPD), an online prayer alter convened by by a famous prophet, Pastor Jerry Eze which has enabled divine interventions to many otherwise frightening health and other conditions.
In the evening of Thursday, October 26, after I heard and learnt about the cirrhosis that was said then to be weighing Vilian down, I sent the NSPPD prayer link to her, explaining how it starts 7am and ends 9am Monday through Friday, and urging her to start participating in the program via facebook or YouTube the very next day, being Friday October 27.
I sent the link via whatsapp and then wrote a separate message hours later in which I said, "Remember d prayer program at 7-9am tomorrow. I sent data to U earlier this evening. Meanwhile, pls sleep well. God d healer is with U"
I sent the separate message at just before 10 pm. When I woke up the next day, Friday, I saw a reply, which got to me while I slept at exactly 2am, in which she said, "Thank you sis, I really appreciate."
Surprised that she refered to me as 'Sis', I wrote back saying, "Sis? It's Onimisi."
She made no reply to that, and taking it that anyone even in the best of circumstances can mistake someone else's identity, I let it pass.
I worried, however, when I noticed after the program that morning that the link I resent through her whatsapp line just before 7am to remind her of the NSPPD prayer that morning did not deliver. It could only have meant that she did not go online to try to participate in the program.
In the evening of Sunday, October 29, I repeated the routine of sending her NSPPD prayer link and data and then calling her Monday morning only to get the same result: Vilian not going online throughout the program to partake of it.
I remember 'reporting' her to Hussaini Hammangabdo who happened to be a close friend of hers.
I had enough realisation of the situation to assure Hussaini, however, that I would not give up, and he agreed with me that I could use the opportunity of our proposed visit to her on Tuesday October 31 to emphasis the need for her to take the NSPPD prayer platform seriously. This was the position by Monday October 30, the eve of the proposed visit.
However, when we got to her house and I saw how she kept having to lie down on the rug in her sitting room when the Deputy Governor's crew and other visitors were with her, I had a fair idea of how difficult it must be far her even to look for long on the screen of a phone to watch or respond to even a prayer program.
As we rose to leave her apartment that Tuesday of our visit, I called aside her cousine, Tarbita and a godmother of hers, Nachana Erickussiy, and told them about the NSPPD program.
Thanksfully, Nachana said she knew about the program, and I urged her to impress it on Vilian.
I urged the cousin, who lived with her, to always join the program and be by Vilian and respond on her behalf as the need might arise.
That is how far poor me could go regarding the concerted efforts to make Vilian live.
God has considered it fit for Vilian to leave us, hard as it is for virtually everyone who knew her, most of who have shared stories of how they did not see her death coming.
Vilian was a great young woman. May everyone who will miss her find the grace to bear her so suddenly not being around us.
Vilian, a former acting chairperson of Adamawa State Chapter of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), was until her death a staff of the Adamawa Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporting from the office of the state Deputy Governor, Professor Kaletapwa Farauta.
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