Ayoola

Oluwakemi Ayoola Somolu

“The trouble is, you think you have time.” (Jack Kornfield)

When life runs smooth and fast, it’s so easy to think that there will always be an abundance of time to do all the things you want to and spend with all the people you want to. Then you find out that isn’t the case.

Time is elastic. It crawls at a snails pace when you most want it to hurry and speeds without you realising it. And somehow 1 year becomes 2 becomes 5 becomes 10.

June 3, 2012 started in a boringly normal way that gave no indication of how it would end. The ten years that have now passed have not lessened the pain in anyway, but dulled it so that it has become a familiar weight that lives somewhere in my heart and head. And sometimes, I even forget it’s there.

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.” (William Gibson)

This evening, my daughter asked me what her Aunty Ayoola’s voice sounded like. And to my horror, I struggled to remember for some moments. How can it be that a voice I heard everyday for a good chunk of my life now threatens to slip from my remembering? If all we have of the people we love are our memories, then we need to be wary because the mind is an unreliable record-keeper, as I’m finding out.

And maybe that’s why I post something about Ayoola each year – no matter how short – because I don’t want to ever forget my beautiful sister. And I don’t want anyone else to forget her either.

Despite its fickleness, the memories still (and thankfully) abound.

Ayoola was extremely detail-oriented and this even showed up when she was a baby. She could not have been more than 8 months. I was sitting with my mother and Ayoola in our living room. The fan was blowing on a rug, which was soaked through. The end of the rug was pulled up so that it could catch the fan’s breeze from both sides and dry faster.

Ayoola pushed the rug down to the floor where she naturally assumed it should be. My mother pulled it back upwards so as to continue drying. Ayoola pushed the rug down to the floor again. After this, my mother let it be surmising that “Ayoola likes things to be in their proper place.”

That same attention to detail was paid to her appearance. Hair. Nails. Make-up. Clothes. Shoes. Accessories. Everything needed to look immaculate and up to her exacting standards.

There was a period where Ayoola went fabric shopping at Tejuoso Market every Saturday, sometimes with her friend Eniola. Yes, EVERY Saturday. From the market, she would head straight for her tailor. Ayoola kept a thick dossier of styles cut out from magazines that she liked and on her visits to the tailor, she would go with a select number of cuttings for this week’s clothes.

Ayoola showed that one could be free to be themselves in all their glory. She embraced and enjoyed fun and seriousness with equal measure.

We, the Somolu children, all loved reading having grown-up borrowing books from the Ikoyi Club library and getting to pick book gifts from Kingsway Store, Leventis and Glendora. Ayoola’s book collection embodied this love and was also wonderfully eclectic with books ranging from romance to personal finance to literary fiction to mass market bestsellers to weighty social topics.

Her love for books lives on in the books she left behind that we all dip into from time to time. It also lives on in Patabah Books, the family-run bookshop that she was a big part in managing after our parents stepped back.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances….” (William Shakespeare)

However we all personally feel about it, 10 years ago Ayoola exited the stage and moved into the heavenly realm.

Despite this, her essence remains in our lives. Even among those who never met her, like most of her nieces and nephews, “Aunty Ayoola” is a very familiar and daily spoken-about figure.

Her legacy will live on in the scholarships, prizes and other initiatives that will bear her name.

Her memory will live on in our hearts and minds.

Dearest Ayoola, continue to rest in peace.