Strife and Death in a Mixed Marriage

Love knows no boundaries. It drives the world and takes individuals to localities they never thought they would end up in. Love being love, causes men and women to refuse to limit themselves to their horizons. They do exactly what feels good to them as people in love.

If it means crossing oceans, lakes, rivers, mountains or traversing continents, they will do it to reach the love of their lives. Little do they sometimes know what awaits them at the end of their journey!

Leah got married to Watson in a civil ceremony, and they were blessed with nine children, both girls and boys. They lived in the city all their lives working and raising their family.

Watson was a lawyer and Leah was an administrative officer. Watson was from the extreme western end on the plateau of the country, while Leah was from the central hilly area of the country. Each area was inhabited by different ethnic communities with different cultural norms.

The two, therefore, spoke different mother tongues, but spoke the national and official languages, and were both Christians. They visited their respective childhood homes now and then alone and together. They both also had very good rapport with their in-laws, who visited them often in the city.

The couple worked hard investing in land, housing and commercial businesses, and achieved a lot of success for their large family in the city. Their children were smart and achieved a lot academically, as all graduated from local and foreign colleges, and became independent in different careers. Some married, started families of their own, while others sought to do the same.

Both parents were involved in volunteer activities, including helping others achieve their goals and working with the disadvantaged. Both stayed married and faithful to each other. They were indeed a model family.

As time went by, Watson and Leah decided to work together at his law firm, so that she could manage the firm’s office, as well as the financial affairs of their other businesses, all in the same office.

She therefore left her job and joined her husband. They were now in their fifties. The businesses did even better than before because management was completely in their hands and Leah was a very judicious and frugal person.

They remained one big, successful and happy family as their years advanced, and they became grandparents. Although they had built their own other home in the countryside where Watson was born, they had no intentions of ever settling there upon retiring. It was to be their home away from home, during vacations or short visits.

Instead, they put up a large house on one of the pieces of land they had bought in the city suburbs. This was to be their retirement sanctuary. They were already doing some farming on this land, so they produced their own milk, eggs, chicken and vegetables. This was also designated to be their final resting place.

As time went on, Watson began to get sick and weak. Because he was financially secure, he managed to get good treatment every time he got ill, and so he continued to work. However, in his seventies, his sickness persisted to the extent that he was hospitalized, and unfortunately passed away.

From thereon, drama ensued. Some people from Watson’s ethnic community, that Leah did not know or had any prior association with, came forth and demanded that Watson be buried at his ancestral homeland in the countryside.

In addition, many that Leah knew from Watson’s extended family, and had good rapport with, now turned against her and joined the dissenters in insisting that Watson’s body be laid to rest in the countryside.

They said, “He is one of us and must be accorded a monumental burial that his status deserves as per our customs. Moreover, his placenta was not thrown in the city dumpsters or burnt in the incinerators, but buried properly in the countryside where his ancestors lay resting. What he bought or put up in the city is not a home, but a house. His home is where he came from.”

Leah thought it was a big joke! She had started making funeral arrangements at their home in the city suburbs, based on their agreement as husband and wife. When her husband’s kinsfolk persisted and she refused, they went to court to prevent her from taking the body from the morgue for burial.

Furthermore, her children were divided. A few were for the clan and the majority for their mother. The legal battle over the burial dragged on for over three months, while Watson’s body remained under guard in the morgue, incurring a huge bill.

Finally, the judge ruled against Leah, citing the precedence of customary law. Leah was devastated.

Furthermore, Watson’s kinsfolk expected her to join hands with them in the burial arrangements and ceremonies, which she refused to, partake in. She did not appear at the morgue, church service or burial site. Some of her and Watson’s children participated while others refused to. Those that participated were their male children, because they wanted to maintain roots where their father came from.

Those who refused to take part, including some of the boys, found the ruckus created by their father’s kinsfolk suspicious. Indeed, it came to light later that some of the objections to their parents’ original burial plans; were based on expectations to inherit Watson’s wealth. It was just as well that she refused to join hands with them over the burial arrangements!

Moreover, it came to light after the funeral that her husband’s kinsfolk waited for her to appear, so they could have her undergo some bizarre cultural rituals that she did not know about, and being a Christian, would likely have objected to.

The questions that bothered many women after this incident were: Doesn’t a woman have the right to bury the man she loves and has stayed married to for much of her life? Doesn’t a woman have the right to bury her husband at the site they decided on as a married couple? Where were all these dissenters when Leah was struggling with Watson in sickness and in health over the years?

Leah, learning from experience, prepared her own burial site, and wrote a will dictating where she wished to be buried. Moreover, she remarried in a civil ceremony which, one would think, fortified her position completely against the resurgence of any contentious issue at her death.

Nonetheless, when Leah passed away, Watson’s kinsfolk, as she anticipated, had the audacity to try to get involved in her burial. They asserted that she be laid to rest at Watson’s burial site, totalling disregarding her second marriage. They swore to ostracize her children from their father’s roots, if things did not go their way. Negotiations involving some progressive leaders from Watson’s ancestral home saved the day, and his kinsfolk were eventually dissuaded from dictating Leah’s burial arrangements.

I believe the true intent behind the saga brought on by Watson’s kinsfolk, was their desire to inherit assets left behind by the couple, completely overlooking the couple’s wishes and children. Culture and tradition were used here to suppress the wishes of individuals.