Greetings!
Being the first born of my family has been with a lot of responsibility. Yeah, it's expected of every first child of a family to carry the cross of the family, but if this would happen, it must come at a certain stage and age of one's life.
However, when this comes at a very tender or young age of a human life, then, the burden or the load might be too much to bear for such a person.
My own responsibility to my family members came to me at a very tender or young age and this was as a result of the sudden death of my mum.
When she died I was still young and it's unfortunate that I was not prepared to bear the burden or step in her shoes when her death occurred.
No wonder Mummy Oni, a family friend of our told me saying,
“Sam, it's now your turn to carry the pillar of the family, you must take care of your brother and the house.”
Although, I was crying when this word came to me from this woman, Mrs. Oni, but the word struck me and immediately it came to me, I stopped crying and embraced the reality of life.
After what this woman told me, another man called me aside and said to me,
“My boy, you have to stop crying as this is not the only day for you to cry, there's still times to come when you will feel the absence of your mother, so you have to be man enough to overcome this and to also make success in life.”
So, looking and analyzing all what these people have told me, I said to myself,
“Sam, brace up and do not let this unfortunate circumstance weigh you down.”
However, ever since then, I took the mantle of my family at age 16 and started working to take care of myself and my brother at age 6. It's a very difficult situation ab-initio, but I overcame the situation with my strong determination and resilience.
Moreover, there's something that pained me to the marrow whenever I remembered. That thing was the failed promises of our relations. Some that promised to be there for us could not be found. Although, I was not angry because they failed to show up, but just because they shouldn't have made the promises in the first place, but such is the acts of people.
However, in all things I thank God for his love and support in the course of my journey in life. Like I said earlier, there were ups and downs in the journey.
I could remember when I joined one contribution like that thinking that I would use the money to further my education into the tertiary institution, but the reverse was the case as my mission for the money was not met. It's when it came to my turn that everything scattered and I was left with nothing and back to square one as I had to hustle back to gather another money which I used to sponsor myself to the university.
However, like I said earlier, I thank God for raising a helper for me even when all hope was gone. Although, where I thought that my help would come from was not where exactly the help came from, but even at that, I thank God and I'm very happy to have been helped and blessed to the extent that something that I would have got with sweat and difficulty came to me with peace of mind, ease and on a platter of gold.
Aside from my own personality, I also needed to take good care of my younger brother and this really made everything so cumbersome to me. As it happened that as I was taking care of myself and my personal life, I would also have to look after my younger brother as well.
Even after I have been helped, I still have to help and take responsibility for my younger brother.
Maybe I would have seen this as nothing, but because I was being over pampered by my parents and finding myself in this kind of a situation was something that I never saw coming and that's why it got to me that way.
However, with all these challenges, I have been able to overcome the situations and be a man of my own and as for my brother, he is doing well as well. He graduated from the university recently and is now going for his second degree.
Thanks for reading.
The picture is mine.