THE ILLUSIONS OF MY LIFE - Chapter 1

 

The Illusions of my Life

by

F SHO 

In MEMORIAL of my Dad WHO GAVE ME INSPIRATION TO WRITE

 

 

 

SISI’s POV - Chapter 1

I woke up to different disruptive ringtones coming from my cell phone and my house phone. My husband was dead asleep beside me, obviously not disturbed by the cacophony that had suddenly become our unwanted morning wake up call. Our children were sleeping soundly undisturbed. None of them had come to our door to complain about the disturbance. I grudgingly sat up and picked up my cell phone. It was the closest to me and I was sincerely hoping that the same person disturbing our peace over my cell phone must have been calling the house phone as well so I was eager to kill two birds with one stone and get back to my beautiful dream, which I now, couldn’t remember.

I looked on the phone and my sister in law names was displayed on the screen. She rarely called me on weekdays, talk less of an early morning call to wake me and my household up on a Thursday. My heart immediately skipped a beat and a sense of foreboding washed over me. Why was she calling me and not her brother? I quickly got up and crossed to the other side of the bed, aiming for the nightstand by the right of the bed, where my husband always kept his cell phone at night. There it was, over fifty missed calls through the night at different intervals. My husband was from Tema, in Ghana and his family had always lived in Accra, the capital city all his life. We had gotten married over fifteen years ago, after dating for five years. We had two beautiful children, a boy, and a girl. The boy was nine years old and the girl was five years old. Five years ago, we had chosen to relocate to the USA, moving to Kissimmee in Florida. We had done the visa lottery program to migrate to the USA and it had come through successfully. Leaving his family behind had been very hard, as in a way they were a tight knit bunch. However, the journey for a better life for our family, was imperative especially for the kids. So, we moved, and kept in touch the best that we could. However, we could never do a good enough job of keeping in touch due to the time difference of four hours.  This was one of the days where the time difference seemed to have played a major role. I quickly woke my husband up, trying not to alarm him as I explained how I woke up and what I had just noticed on our phones. As I showed him, the missed calls on my screen, a text message came up “Please call me, its urgent”. The message was from one of my brothers in law. This time, I was fully panicked. I scanned in my mind, a million and one things that could have gone wrong. There was a mother in law, who was advanced in age but still relatively healthy compared to her peers, two sisters in law, one of which had called my cell phone, twenty times already. The other had spent the time on my husband phone instead and maybe the house phone. They had to be fine, for them to be able to call persistently. That left my brothers in law and my mother in law. One of them had just sent me a message so that ruled him out. That left two people to eliminate, one of which was younger and healthier. I feared for my mother in law daily and losing her would be a blow I was sure I was not ready to accept and I knew that was the same for my husband.

My husband got out of bed, walked to the house phone, picked it up and placed a call to his sister. I could see the trepidation on his face. I guess just like me, his thoughts had traveled and analyzed several possibilities as to the reason for the frantic calls. However, nothing prepared both of us for what we were about to hear on the phone.