My friend Aisha died a month to my ninth birthday.

Aisha was my friend, neighbour and granddaughter of our landlord, Paa Amadu.
She was one of those kids who no one really paid attention to.
Her mother wasn’t in the picture and her dad was young and still in school.
Her dad’s nickname was ‘young man’, he was funny, outgoing and he was very much liked by everyone.
His daughter on the other hand was a bit like me; shy, quiet, moody and a little weird.

Sometimes she’d just follow me around and we didn’t even have to speak.
She was younger and looked small for her seven and the half years.

What I remember most about Aisha is her laughter; she had a loud shrill laugh that sounded like a cry.

Aisha was also devoted friend.

She’d be there when I got home from school and stay on most days after we’ve had dinner and watched a movie, and then my mom would make her go home.

I wasn’t always a good friend to Aisha, I was mean to her sometimes.
I’d ditch her to go play with the older kids, occasionally I’d ask her to leave me alone or intentionally pick a fight with her just so I can get in with the older kids.
My dad saw me do this once; he marched up to me and said;

“Do you know how lucky you are to have someone who adores you? Now, go upstairs and play with your friend!”

One sad day in May, Aisha suddenly fell sick, she died while being rushed to the hospital.
When I got home from school, my mom told me with succinct indifference that Aisha had died.
I could never understand to this day why she was so unaffected by it, and we’ve never spoken of her since then.
My dad was angry, he said she had died from an easily preventable disease.

He called it a senseless death!
I barely slept that night; I stayed up trying to make sense of it all.

The next day I got back from school just in time to see Aisha’s coffin procession make its way from the mosque.

It passed right in front on our house, I stood on our veranda and watched.

That same veranda we had played on many times, we used to do cartwheels on that veranda… Aisha and I.
Aisha could do twenty-one cartwheels from one end to the other, and I twenty.
In Aisha, I’ve learned not to take people for granted.

Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!

My work colleagues and I stood around the ‘water cooler’ (in our case an old drafting table in the hallway by the kitchen) discussing Michael Jackson’s sudden death.

Most of us remember loving his songs when we were kids; a colleague recalls his Bad album being the first ‘tape’ he ever bought with his allowance. I had the Bad album too; my brother Paul got it for me when he went away to school in California. I knew the words to all the songs.

It’s incredible how one person’s music has affected so many lives, that’s the Michael Jackson phenomenon and hopefully his legacy lives on.

People often ask me why I moved to Canada and specifically Vancouver – I have several reasons, all valid but there’s a one that’s very old and impulsive that I don’t talk about often.

When I a ten year old living in central Freetown I watched a short clip of Michael Jackson (Jackson Five) on tour in Vancouver, BC. I think that was the very first time I heard of the city. It was an old video, probably from a special on his 1984 Victory tour; it had clips from other cities as well. The clip included shots of Vancouver, it’s not anything like I remembered now but the views of the water and mountains were still pretty amazing back then.

Years later when we were presented with the opportunity to live in Canada, I chose Vancouver remembering that video, and was pleasantly pleased after a little research into the city.

By the time I got to my teens, I’d gone from living with my mom, dad and siblings to living with my dad, his new wife and a bunch of strangers. My mom and siblings had all but disappeared from my life, and these new folks were not very nice people.

Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” helped me through some very turbulent times. I used to play the song over and over again. I still get misty eyed when I hear that song sometimes. Before then, my ‘woe is me’ song used to be Madonna’s “Oh Father” but I could only play that on my Walkman.

If I were to make a compilation of the soundtrack to my life, it’ll include a Michael Jackson song.

My BFF Josie lost her father-in-law recently; obviously it’s a difficult period for the family.

I been thinking about death a lot lately (yes, it’s all about me) because in the past month I’ve had three other news of death;

• A colleague’s sister died suddenly two Fridays ago ;
• A consultant lost her husband to a degenerative disease days ago;
• And a gentleman we knew from Maryland died a few weeks ago.

We were recently discussing the legacies we leave behind when we die. I imagine wisdom, lessons, feats, traditions etc that’ll pass on to our descendants. I wondered if that was enough to want to live an exemplary life or make something of ourselves. Or we could choose to be the cautionary tale.

A couple of years back I went with Josie to her grandmother’s funeral in a mountain town in the eastern region of Ghana. There were throngs and throngs of mourners; people whose lives she’d touched in some way. Many spoke of her courage and incredible life; this inspired me even though I never knew her. Her existence was a reflection on her children and their accomplishments, she left a great legacy.

Today, I think about Josie’s little girl and I’m hopeful, one day she’ll know of the great people that came before her. Their legacies would shape her; she’ll learn from their examples and know their origins.

Pearlsa tells a dream she had after my grandmother died; my grandmother asked her to choose from two eggs, one a Fabergé-like egg and the other a plain brown egg. She obviously chose the nicer looking egg only to find it’s rotten inside, the plain egg on the other hand was fresh inside with a glorious shade of yolk. My grandmother tells her that she went away so that she’d be remembered like the inside of the plain egg rather than the egg that’s rotten on the inside.

I think death in a way inspires us and since it’s inevitable sometimes you just have to regrettably see the good that eventually comes out of it.