Facebook user, Richard Henshaw shared the heartbreaking story of a woman stabbed to death by her husband. Read below:
This story has challenged me for days.
A story so brutal and heartless.
But when a story challenges me I don’t run away from it.
I challenge the story back by telling it.
And this is one story I have to tell with burning emotions.
And tears in my eyes.
The story of someone I know.
The most malleable woman I knew.
Married to the most violent man I know.
Baneful.
An abuser.
Chauvinistic.
With airs of megalomania.
A marriage made in hell.
Everyday her tears roused the consciousness of the neighbourhood.
Every night the neighbourhood stayed awake because of her.
They had been entangled in many of their fights.
Everyone could perceive that putrid smell of superciliousness that he oozed out.
“This is my family matter,” he always shouted at people that came to settle their fights. “You people should go and mind your businesses and leave my family matter alone…”
She was locked behind that world.
Of depression.
Defeat.
And mental agoraphobia.
Lonely.
Two kids.
Adorable.
Her hope.
Friends had told her to take a walk.
To quit the marriage.
But she said she was staying because of her children.
“I want them to have a father…To grow up in a complete home….It will shatter their psyche if I leave….” She always said.
She stayed.
A ratification of sacrifice.
For children.
For love.
But then what was the meaning of love?
Is it when we continue to hold our own side of the bargain, while the people we love walk about with levity and without care?
What pleasure is there in that?
Is it when we continue to give and give and drain ourselves, while the people we are giving don’t care about our refill?
Is it when we continue to love and get lost, while the people we love don’t care to find us?
Why do we continue to hold on to the wrong structure, without the strength to let go?
Why do we lose our sanity while searching for acceptance?
She kept saying, “He will change. I’m praying for him. Someday he will change and be a good man….”
The hope of change was a pipe dream.
And then few days ago it happened.
Change finally came!
For her.
For them.
The time was past 2am.
The street spoke silent voices.
The silence melded with the voices of the menagerie.
And what we got were feelings of peace.
Something close to the smell of the first rains on a summer noon.
We heard her scream.
It was an ominous scream.
Desperate.
Falling cadences.
It was not the usual scream.
The whole neighbourhood awoke.
Who ever thought that a lone voice could awaken the world?
But the world awoke to her scream.
And when we ran to see her, she was there on the floor.
Swimming in the pool of her own blood.
Her intestines spilling out from the hole in her belly.
Her two children weeping bitterly beside her.
I looked at the blood.
Purple crimson.
I was shivering.
“What happened to her?”
“H-h-h-h-he stabbed me….” she cried.
“Chisos! Where is he?”
“H-h-h-he….”
She couldn’t talk again.
Life was leaving her.
She was dying.
Have you ever watched someone die?
It was a nightmare.
Tears soaked my face.
I was trembling.
The neighbours searched the whole place for her husband, but could not find him.
He had escaped.
Not seen up till today.
We tried to save her.
The first hospital she was rushed to rejected her.
They knew it was a hopeless case.
“Blood is no more flowing in my body ooo….Please you people should help me take care of my children…” She wept on the way to the General Hospital.
Tears flooded everyone’s eyes.
“Nothing will happen to you ok. You won’t die and leave your children…” We told her.
Then silence!
She died!
On the way.
Even before we reached the General Hospital.
Her death still haunts me.
Still gives me nightmares.
Still makes me cry.
I stil tremble when I see the bloody photos in my phone.
I still cringe when I remember her.
I wish she had left.
I wish she had quitted the abusive relationship.
And I know she wishes that too in the nether world.
Rest in peace, good woman.
Say no to abusive relationships.
Write me a poem, Li ….. I am broken!
