OPEN (A Story)

Jude smiles at the passionate embrace of the wind over his skin. It's reviving.
A feeling he has lost touch with for weeks. He has been sick. Bedridden.
To the outside world he was almost numb but his inner man never skipped a second.
He felt it. He felt everything as he laid on the hospital sheet.
Those weeks provided him with lots of reflective thoughts. Like he was drown in mediation.
It was a teachable moment.

The calibration on the huge machine convinced onlookers that he was alive. His eye balls, once in a while, made exaggerated movements.
His index and middle fingers flinched occasionally to communicate that he still had breath in him.
Jude on the other hand was in a distinctly separate world. The land of self examination.
Everything was coming back to him.
The good, the bad and ugly. Majorly the later-two.
He could see himself for who he truly was.
The ugliness of his actions were fat and full standing before his eyes.
A nurse once noticed a tear roll down his face. His soul was sober, repentant.

Now, this moment he is awake and alive with a chance to live life to the fullest. To live kind and empathetically.
He isn't heading home now. Jude is walking through the streets making his way to the magnificent city plaza.
Intending to spend the whole day watching the way city people live.
He is realizing that most humans forget the value of the being alive, free.
Most aren't being caged by a disease or locked behind bars.

For once he is realizing what a blessing it is to walk freely on earth making choices that shifts the direction of your life and affects that of others.
"How beautiful?" he mused as he finds himself somewhere elevated to sit.
He imagines that humans aren't slaves to circumstances that we can pave our path to destiny as long as we are healthy and wield some level of freedom.
Floods of thoughts brushing through his mind, same way the warm breeze does to his skin. He loves it.

Hours skiing pass and then he could feel it. It's evening!
Stands. Looks around.
"I need to head home." saying as he rthymicly scratches his beards.
With the poise of a priest he walks, his compass pointing south; home.

Now, he is few blocks away from his flat.
His bright eyes meets the sight of some people, obviously church people, sitted directly opposite the compound he lives.
A lady, with her hair tied in almost four yards of fabric, face void of any kind of painting and feet in funny red shoes, stands before the sober religion people.
Her head bent to the side, eyes to the cloud and her sharp voice slice through the air as she sings her painful hymn.
"Spirikoko" he smiles.

"Na so my church people for do.
See as she dey do like say she dey see angel.
Yeye hypocrites!" he sighs.
And funny, he noticed that his own local congregation were mixed in the crowd of people.

He wondered what particular service would be held here and at a time like this, which would have made folks from another local assembly to grace the occasion.
He shrugged.
He didn't particularly want to be part of what ever was happening.
'We go met for church!' waving his hand lady-likely.
Boycotting them, he uses the private path through the back of the compound. Moves in.

He's stunned.
"What's happening?" he wondered.
A larger group of people sitting inside the compound. Before his door. Crying.
All familiar faces.
His mum. His sisters. His choir members.
A weird sight.
Shivering. An eerie cold grips him.
His gaze slowly shifts to the service program.
He sees himself. His face.
HIS OBITUARY PROGRAMME!