The family some school of thoughts opine, is a direct reaction to the biblical injunction : "Be fruitful and multiply". God in there prologual chapter of the bible: Genesis (1: 28) enjoined man to go into the world; increase and multiply...
The creator of the world also gave the command to the "Blameless" character in the bible and Son of Lamech: Noah. God charged the inventor of the Famed Biblical Ark, his sons and his sons' sons to "Be fruitful, increase greatly on the earth and multiply it. (Genesis: 9:7).
Man was therefore charged by God to increase his population by bearing and rasing children. A man then hooks a woman, by whatever means; legally or otherwise, to raise children. Thus a family surfaces.
So Roland Emeka Opara (Nda Emeka) in the mid 70s, started a family, perhaps as a plain contribution to the injunction to multiply the earth. He matrimonised my late mother, Cordelia and they hoped to procreate aplenty. Fate however thwarted that dream, that wish. After all the misses and near misses, it stopped at one: Chukwuemeka; making it just a family of three.
A family of three like a flower nectar to a butterfly, attracts attention due to its complexities. It is always before the public view.
The man in a family of three is not just a father but a guardian. All fathers protect their families but this particular one is left to protect the mother and child. His word is law and no dissidence is allowed.
Joseph the Foster Father of Jesus obeyed the angel''s instructions on how to protect the child from the menacing onslaughts of King Herod. The flight with the holy family to Egypt and back, the search for the child when he commenced his divine evangelism among other protective tendencies; lead credence to the fact that protecting an only child is not just ordinary protection. It is simply put, a protection that is out of this world.
Richard Donner in his 1976 Supernatural Horror Film-- Omen, shows Reverend Father Brennan telling American Diplomat based in Rome, Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) that his secretly adopted son Damien was evil. He was infact the prophesied Antichrist. Thorn in his protective embodiment; did not listen. Instead he nearly strangles Brennan in a fist of anger.
Events later turn awry for the Thorn's family as devastation upon devastation takes toll. Apparently, protecting the only child nay a family of three in most cases, blocks the ear.
Nda Emeka will not want Chukwuemeka, the only child in this particular family of three, to socialise, stay out beyond 6pm, engage in hard chores among other protective tendencies. Months before his demise, he was still complaining that Chukwuemeka did not offer sciences in his Senior Secondary School (SSS) days. Chukwuemeka was in SSS 1 in 1991. This is 33 years on.
The child opted for Arts and subsequently had a diploma in Marketing and a degree in Mass Communication. He has risen to the position of a Senior Editor and State Head of a reputable national media organisation. Nda EMEKA simply wanted him to be an Engineer as he was. Anything other than that, was pure defiance. In a family of the three, you are either a loyalist or a rebel.
The mother in a family of three is the custodian of the family's emotions. In fact she guages it; a thermometer of some sorts.
Mary was perplexed when the "high ranking herald of visions" Angel Gabriel visited her to say she will beget a child who would would save the world. Overcoming emotions, she accepted despite the permeative knowledge that she knew no man.
When Christ Jesus was missing, Mary followed Joseph in the search party for her only child. They found Jesus evangelising in the temple in Jerusalem. In a deep emotional upsurge: "Son why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing". (Luke: 2: 48--52).
Damien's mother in the Omen, Katherine Thorn (Lee Remick) heeded Father Brennan's warning that Damian was evil unlike her husband who did not believe. Infact she believed the warning that he would kill her second child inside the womb.
The burst of emotion in a family of three is usually intense. Katherine confronted her husband on the need to check the child. She barked and wept from the remotest recesses of her soul. She swore to abort the baby instead of being killed by Damien. Yet her husband will not listen and a catastrophic chain of events that even claimed their lives, followed .
Cordelia, Chukwuemeka's late mother was always afraid to lose the child. He meant everything to her. Her world revolved round the big-headed "dissident'. The period of sickness was worse. In any seeming, serious bout of illness,, she would repeatedly ask the nurse or doctor: Will he survive? It was a case of "this child cannot die before me.
This scenario was further illustrated by a pummeled Pharaoh during God's plague on the Egyptians.
Exodus 12: 29--38 tells us that in the 10th plague meted to the Egyptians over Pharaoh's refusal to allow the Israelites go:: the battered dictator knelt before his status which the Egyptians worshipped as god.and bellowed: "Take me and keep my child,"
Chukwuemeka in his infancy and even up till teenage hood, was known as Cordelia's 'handbag' because she took him anyway she went. The child grew and started seeking independence. It was one hell of a fight but Cordelia persisted with the morale of "otu nkpuru anya ji isi ugwo' (one eye that is indebted to blindness) "Otu akwa a na-ejide si ike (one egg that is held firmly).
The visiting days at the Marist Brothers Juniorate Uturu, then Okigwe, Imo state and now, Isuikwuato, Abia state where Chukwuemeka schooled, was fortnightly. It is on record that Cordelia risked the ever busy, crooked terrained, Enugu---Okigwe--Uturu highway to see his only child on all the visiting days till he left the school. She couldn't bear not seeing him every two weeks. On some occasions, the visiting days fell one week to the closure for the terms. She visited him and still came to pick him for holidays, one week later.
Someone told me under confidentiality that Cordelia choose to pray inside my room in our Enugu abode during my National Youth Service days in Omu Aran, Kwara state. She did so also, during my sojourn for means of livelihood in Kwara, Lagos and Abuja and search for greener pastures in Libya. That person said that Cordelia believed that her God would hear her prayers better inside that room and bring me back whole, to her.
The child in the family of three is the catalyst for peace or conflict,; in fact how far that family can go in success or failure.
Damien despite Katherine's affectionate motherly love for him in the Omen, was on a mission: to kill and destroy. Whether he was the antichrist or not, he did not pretend about whom he was and what he was detailed from the depths, to do.
Jesus already knew that the work cut out for him in the world, was to evangelise and bring back lost souls to his father, the maker of the world. So when Mary told him that the family had searched for him everywhere, his reply was blunt: "Why are you looking for me? Don't you know that I must be in my father's house? (Luke 2: 49 : 52)
This however did not stop him from following the family to Nazareth. The bond in a family of three is indescribable.
The child in a family of three is a source of immense pride to the threesome. He or she is the main source of consolation especially if the child is doing well and can always be or looked up or called upon,, to make a difference in situations.
Jesus and his mother were present at a wedding feast in Cana, the Galilean city. Mary knew his capacity and capability; an element of pride. The wine finished and she trusted her son to make the much needed difference. Such occasion affords the ingenious child, an opportunity to shine:
Mary proudly walked up to her son: "their wine has finished". With a majestic opulence, Jesus replied: "what business do you have with me, woman. Don't you know that my time has not come" (John 2: 11). Yet still, the virgin mother knew what her child could do. She told the servants at the wedding: :"Whatever he tells you to do, do it".
....And the rest of the first miracle of our saviour, continues to be history....
Cordelia so much believed in Chukwuemeka's abilities. She pampered him with finesse. The boy though always recalcitrant, towed the book line. So in unorthodoxy and sometimes chaos, the book became his strength.
He weathered infancy, adolescence, adult hood and now fatherhood; in fact now, a father of four,. Some people in unblemished candour, assuage his succumbity that with three sons, a daughter, and wife, he is no longer an only child.
Despite this witting and unwitting sermon, Chukwuemeka knows that he is still an only child. The demise of two members of the family of three, brings the stark reality, nearer home.
Since Nda Emeka's demise, all the consolers have been unanimous in their chorus: 'Chukwuemeka, you are not alone; God is with you. Infact and in short, we are with you.
Such words bring fortitude and hope. But a stern uncle told him what he deserves and need to hear: Tell your employers that you are the only child. That you need to come home and commence preparations for your father's burial. The task rests squarely on you".
Some people say Chukwuemeka has done well so far in life. After burying Cordelia, how Nda Emeka's burial pans will determine how well he has done.
Issues and situations involving a family of three evoke concern, pity and mercy; perhaps due its vulnerability or mere whims and caprices.
The forces of goodness and even the malevolent ones were miffed with Damien's overbearing onslaughts in the Omen. Despite their discordant appellations and realms, they joined forces to tame the wild child and strip him of all powers. That was why in Omen 2, the sub title was "The power of evil is longer in the hands of the child.
The child was delivered, became the innocent he was supposed to be and became remorseful for his past deeds.
Jesus displayed his messianic splendour with his wondrous miracle in the city of Nain. A city located in the lower part of Galilee in northern Israel, 14 kilometres south of Nazareth. The book of Luke (7: 12) tells us that a crowd carried the corpse of young man for burial: "the only son of his mother and she was a widow";
The only son is often confused with the only child but in proven, realistic terms, the only son has sisters at least one. This is exemplified with Lazarus in the Mary and Martha fame. The only child has no sibling even half, like the late son of the Nainan widow and Chukwuemeka.
So Jesus moved with pity, called the pallbearers and divinely realised that the woman 's worldly fate is apparently sealed. No husband, no child. Her days on earth might be numbered. So he had pity on her and brought the child back to life. He handed the boy back to his mother perhaps to increase the number of her days on earth.
Cordelia exited this world on February 15, 2020 and Nda Emeka now on September 20, 2024. The family of three has been reduced to one. To increase his days on earth, Chukwuemeka like the woman of Nain, deserves our lord's pity.
It is then our fervent prayer that Jesus would have mercy on Chukwuemeka, like the woman of Nain.
