I Still mourn Wife Nine Years After She Passed, Was it Love, Guilt, or Commitment?

I still mourn. Very much so. Marriage was a personal choice that I had to make. I wasn’t prepared to suffer the consequence, good or bad, for the choices I had made. 

No one knows that that thing called Marriage is a job by itself, requiring hard work, patience, planning, and endurance. Few men that I know have the stamina to stomach excruciating pain.

I went against the wishes of my father’s family members, especially my sainted mother whom I knew loved me to the core and wanted the best for me.

Talking about confusion, I have dealt with the guilt of disobeying the pleas of a mother who gave me her breasts to suck and made me feel special.

And I gave Mother my promise to have nothing to do with foreign women but to marry an Igbo (Nigeria) girl. I went back on my promise.

I had to go ahead with my choice of a foreign wife because marriage is a personal choice that only I could make.

Mother feared that a foreign wife would destroy the values she had deposited, instilled in me and  that a foreign wife could prevent me from returning to my native land and kindred. Sweet Mother felt I had to be rooted to the soil or else lost.

Fortunately, the woman that I married did not do what Mother was afraid of nor did I lose my sense of direction after my wife died. Guilt was eating me up as ikpuru (Igbo for maggots) eat up the corpse.

I didn’t kill my dear wife, and I didn’t kill Sweet Mother. I felt I disappointed both women, Maxine and Mother.

The point I want to emphasize is that I had made up my mind to be a disobedient boy when I decided, despite promise I gave to Mother, to marry a 24-year-old graduate student I had met at the University of Tennessee.

Maxine was her name, and she and I were working toward the Master of Science degree in different fields, the Master of Science in Social Work or Maxine, to be specific.

Several uninvited people got involved in my marriage. My Nigerian friends advised me to “get the Green Card and leave the woman.” Maxine’s  American detractors asked, “You still with that 

African?”

Uninvited people and detractors have one thing in common: they are critics, disparagers, hecklers, attackers, decriers. They speak unappealingly, unpleasantly, repellently, unenticingly, unattractively.

Maxine ended up being a perfect wife. She eventually had the PhD at age 37 in Clinical Counseling, she gave birth to our three sons, and we were married for 40 years until her death resulted from cancer.

What was more important was that Dr. Maxine M. Agazie followed me to Nigeria where we lived for a few years before returning to America for work toward the terminal degrees. What Nigerian woman could do what Maxine did appealingly?

I am glad I made the choice I made, having been influenced by my parents’ example.  Papa and Mama believed in the sanctity of the marital vow; they were grounded in the conviction that “whoever findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favour of the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22), and that marriage is to last a lifetime.

Papa and Mama had 8 of us, 4 boys and 4 girls, and they were married for over 60 years until both died prior to end of the Biafra War.

This essay explores why many of my friends and your friends in America and Nigeria are still unmarried, and why those who are married are unhappily coupled, divorced, or involved in multiple unstable relationships.

The question is this: What keeps Nigerian men from marrying and staying married as my grandparents once did and as I tried to do? Is it money, fear, custom, or whatchamacallit?

Regrettably, folks are not marrying any more as often as they once did and should do. Those who are married are divorcing at alarming rates or going their separate ways at the slightest irritation.

Are the pressures of combining such seemingly incompatible activities as career, family and marriage exacting a heavy toll that destroys marital relationships? Not quite sure. It is a fastidious concoction of mismatched, unharmonious/inharmonious goings-on.

Are greed and selfishness responsible for frequent divorces and falling out of love? Yes. Add infidelity to the list of the problems warring against marital bliss.

Hollywood and Nollywood people make us sick. They are telling us that, since marriage is hard, we must just forget it, have fun, and the thought of marriage will go right away with the wind. Chinua Achebe would agree that separate objects not joined together can never fall apart.

The media is of no help when it comes to marriage. Media is writing one thing and doing the other. Wealthy people are going through marriages, divorces and remarriages. You wonder if life is s revolving door

The government offers the worst example. How many wives do Buhari and other Muslim politicians have

And the US Constitution which I read in law school tells me that marriage is a fundamental right we can heed or ignore. It is done at will.  

A fundamental right means a right that is important, central, basic, vital, or essential thing I can choose to get into or avoid getting into. It is not a do-or-die thing, like breathing or using the toilet.

In other words, there is no obligation to marry anyone, and one can divorce a wife for any reason or no reason at all. It is as easy as 1,2,3. Marriage is easy come and easy go.

I can divorce at random without offering any soul any reason for my action. A claim of Irreconcilable differences is the most prevalent excuse to get out of a marriage. The closest reason is ifunanya adighi (Igbo for no love).

What is going on? Why don’t people want the traditional marriage? They seem to want convenience, marriage for convenience, the ancient trade by barter?

Marriage for convenience means the overriding aim is fun, suitability, expediency, ease, handiness, openness, opportuneness.

Handiness means the marriage is based upon proximity, accessibility, closeness, availability, or user friendliness. No work is involved.

Men aren’t snatching women up at the marriage registry because there is nothing to snatch and there aren’t too many women who have the wife material. What do men mean by wife material?

Wife Material describes a woman a man would happily take home to introduce to his parents, a woman he would consider marrying someday after all conditions necessary to make a marriage work are completed. So that’s wife material.

What are the characteristics? A wife material is woman who is about her business. She is educated in that she is cultured, cultivated, tasteful, sophisticated, or refined, and she can hold her own in a conversation, and she is as learned as she can be.

Back to Dr. Maxine Agazie. She had taught university for over 30 years, being promoted to the rank of Full Professor. She completed post-doctorate programs at the Ohio State University, was invited to lecture at Oxford University as well as Madras Christian College, india.

A woman is wife material if she is generous, but takes nonsense, puts husband’s needs first and can give her man a breathing space. A breathing space means the woman is not a clinging vine.

Back to Maxine again. She delayed her PhD to assist me get mine. She was the first professional social worker in West Africa employed by the Eastern Nigerian Ministry of Health and Social Services under the government of Sole Administrator Ukpabi Asika.

She headed the group charged with the responsibility for repatriating Biafran children back home from London and other West African countries to which the babies were sent to escape starvation and kwasiokor.

Maxine was neither clinging nor arrogant. A clingy wife is suffocating, insecure, figure-hugging, tight-fitting, She is not okpagbue mu ( Igbo for she is choking the breath out of me).

The last four sentences in this essay are simple declarations. Yes, I was married to Maxine for 40 long years. It was a good decision I had made and do not regret making. It was a commitment. The guilt is gone. In its place are appreciation and happy memories.

A wife material takes her wifely duties seriously; though she does not allow jealousy to make her man feel uncomfortable to the extent he runs away or hides in the company male and/or female friends.

A wife material can cook sumptuous meals and keeps a clean home, and she can graciously enlist the help of her husband to do the heavy duties.

A wife material handles money well as she is not a spendthrift. wasteful, extravagant, improvident, prodigal, or reckless.

Women who are wife materials do not come by easily. One must search diligently to find the needle in a haystack.

Not being able to find women with wife material is not the only problem men find militating against successful marriage. There are other pressing issues. To militate is to influence, impinge, or affect negatively.

First, there is a preponderance of free sex everywhere you go where men and women get into bed to have sex at the slightest erection, without thinking about marriage. If one can have sex easily with Monica, chances are that Monica can have sex with every other Jack and Harry.

Second issue is that marriages involve much expenditures, such as expensive feasts and weddings rings that only a few men can afford the cost of nuptials without being in debt and without seeking extensive financial help.

Men ask, “Why do you have to have a cheap wedding and the community calls you names or you are laughed at?”

Third issue affecting marriages is that men want working-class ladies who have skills to contribute to family upkeep. What does a man want in a “gimme-me” wife who says,  “give me this, give me that, why don’t you do so and so for me?”

Fourth issue impinging upon marriages is people do not trust each other anymore. What is trust? It is having the faith, belief, connection, or conviction in someone. Is the man or woman one is marrying of a good moral character?

Next issue is the unrealistic expectations of the in laws who often are selfish, uneducated, unemployed, and who demand that a man seeking their daughter’s hand in marriage must spend an arm and a leg in the process.

There are cases where families ask a would-be husband to do the near impossible like erect a 3-bedroom and parlor house for the in-law or train a family member in the university. 

Being a wife material means the woman ought to have a career at least to help in the case the husband dies, becomes so sick or incapacitated he cannot provide for his family; the wife takes over as principal breadwinner.

If one cannot obtain a woman that is wife material, one tries contracting marriage through trades by barter.

Barter is quicker, easier to get rid of and gotten out of. Why do I buy $700,000 Rolls Royce when I can lease a $45,000 Mercedes look alike that I can return and exchange?

It’s not the scarcity of eligible men that is causing the problem of not marrying, and the problem isn’t the result of not having beautiful women to choose from.

This essay is concerned with why there are fewer weddings nowadays performed in the traditional “native law” way, at the church or before a court judge. Why are these ceremonies getting fewer and rarer?

Can we say marriage has boiled down to the gimme stuff? The gimme stuff comes like this: if you give me sex, I will give you seurity. This is trade by barter.

Gimme marriage is a trade by barter; it does not last as the case of Cousin Mike at Abuja would indicate.

 Mike was in serious love with Paulina and everyone felt it was an arrangement permanently sealed in heaven before the throne of Jehovah.

Two years into the marriage, Mike would be seen driving 7 hours to Anambra village to form a shacking relationship he had with a beautiful widow named Mercy. Shacking?

Yes, shacking.   There is no responsibility. Shacking is when couples live together while having sex and not married to each other.

My cousin Mike married to Paulina at Abuja drives to the village to shack up with Mercy. The trouble with Paulina was that she is permanent, but Mike wants the temporary Mercy. It’s a case of having one’s cake and eating it.

Consider the marriage of my late parents who were married for over 60 years and sired or begat 8 children. Like my late parents, the olden-days people  viewed marriage as an a-till-death-part-us arrangement.

Marriage is the plan to produce and raise children in a permanent nuclear family setting consisting of mother, father, and children.

Nowadays, life has changed drastically so much that today’s men see marriage as an unbearable burden. It is no longer the till -death-separate-us thing. Some people want the temporary arrangement; a few want it permanent. 

Can marriage be made temporary and contracted as needed? That means man and woman can live together as husband and wife for one month, two months, or as long as they can tolerate each other.

If marriage is temporary, it is not worth waiting for; it is not worth being patient with; it is not worth holding together; and it is not worth being taken care of properly. Why?

The reason is that if it is temporary, it is disposable, throwaway, one-use, nonrefundable. A temporary thing is not reusable. It is like that filthy garbage bag you throw out with your unwanted materials.

I hear that billionaire Bill Gates knows how to throw things away. Suppose a thousand-dollar bill falls off this billionaire’s hand as he counts money or slips out of his trousers’ pocket, what would he do?

Does Mr. Gates bend down to pick the $1,000 up? No No No. He would just leave it laying there on the ground. Bending down wastes time. Picking it up will take longer time than the billionaire would spend to make another billion dollars.

Marriage is being considered as a thing out of vogue; out of fashion, it is no longer trending. The craze is going or gone, like the baggy pants or bell-bottoms of the 40’s and 50’s.

Who wears those out-of-style fashions of by-gone era? One must be brave to wear the old-fashioned stuffs at the risk of being laughed at or called names like “that old crazy fool.”

Women are going bra-less, saying it is hot and uncomfortable to wear bras, and women are cutting off all their hair to get the breeze in their heads.

Wigs are too hot, they say. and men want to see the real thing –sagging breasts that bra seeks to not shield.

A thing is temporary if it is provisional, impermanent, momentary, brief, or passing. American schools specialize in temporariness.

 Universities need adjuncts to reduce costs.  Public schools employ what is known as temporary or substitute teachers; these assist the permanent or tenure-track staff carry out the teaching duties.

Universities and the school system underpay the Temporary Staff, students disrespect temporaries, and temporaries do not receive such benefits as health insurance, sick leaves are paid vacations,

In shacking up arrangement, men want women to provide sex whenever the urge arises, and, on the other hand, women see the plan  as you-take-care-of-my needs-and-I-take-care-of-your needs responsibility. 

Coming to my old folks, how did Papa and Mama manage to stay longer in marriage than what is going on today with young people?

Papa had to work hard to prove to Mama and her parents that surely, ultimately Papa was ready for marriage. He had to have a job or a means to provide for food, housing, clothing. Was he prepared for the arrival of kids?

To prove his readiness, Papa had to satisfy many demands, such as payment of a dowry, consisting of a sum of money, a goat or goats, bags of rice, some chickens, yams, wines (palm wine and beers). 

The purpose of paying a dowry was not to exploit a would-be husband or to enrich the would-be in-laws.

The dowry served to impress upon the man seeking a wife that marriage was not to be taken lightly or gotten into easily or gotten out of easily. 

Yes, I was married to Maxine for 40 long years. It was a good decision I had made and do not regret making. It was a commitment. The guilt is gone. In its place are appreciation and happy memories.

Posted Friday, June 28, 2019

By Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com