The Sunflower In My Father’s Garden As A Metaphor For The Return Of Our Ancestors.
By John Chinaka Onyeche
A Sunflower had sprouted out in my father’s garden in the morning, I showed it to him in the
evening while we had walked through the garden. And my father told me that, it was a way of
our ancestors returning, those who had died in the years past without a trace of them with
humans. They return as flowers from their long time journey into the spirit land that we
should now care for them. And when I showed it to my mother, she said that ‘’it is a gift from
nature’’; and admonished that I should care for the little sunflower in our garden. But when I
came back to look at it again to know where it was coming from, I was bemused how it faded
away from the spot where it stood like the Sun in the firmament. Then when I returned home
from the garden, the news was broken to me that my father had walked away from home to
where no trace of him is possible and that my mother had wailed rivers as tears and that she
had paddled through it as her wooden canoe into the world of oblivion and each day of my
remembrance them, I walk through the garden searching for a sunflower, maybe my father
might have returned through it or my mother will become like nature in the garden and my
father as the sunflower and now as my ancestor.
BIO:
John Chinaka Onyeche "Rememberajc" (he/his) is a husband, father and a poet from Nigeria (author of Echoes Across The Atlantic and A Night Tale At The Threshold Of Howl). He writes from the city of Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria. He is currently a student of History and Diplomatic Studies at Ignatius Ajuru University Of Education Port Harcourt Rivers State.
A Sunflower had sprouted out in my father’s garden in the morning, I showed it to him in the
evening while we had walked through the garden. And my father told me that, it was a way of
our ancestors returning, those who had died in the years past without a trace of them with
humans. They return as flowers from their long time journey into the spirit land that we
should now care for them. And when I showed it to my mother, she said that ‘’it is a gift from
nature’’; and admonished that I should care for the little sunflower in our garden. But when I
came back to look at it again to know where it was coming from, I was bemused how it faded
away from the spot where it stood like the Sun in the firmament. Then when I returned home
from the garden, the news was broken to me that my father had walked away from home to
where no trace of him is possible and that my mother had wailed rivers as tears and that she
had paddled through it as her wooden canoe into the world of oblivion and each day of my
remembrance them, I walk through the garden searching for a sunflower, maybe my father
might have returned through it or my mother will become like nature in the garden and my
father as the sunflower and now as my ancestor.
BIO:
John Chinaka Onyeche "Rememberajc" (he/his) is a husband, father and a poet from Nigeria (author of Echoes Across The Atlantic and A Night Tale At The Threshold Of Howl). He writes from the city of Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria. He is currently a student of History and Diplomatic Studies at Ignatius Ajuru University Of Education Port Harcourt Rivers State.
