Encounter with the Angel of Death

“Oh, for the time when I shall sleep without identity” were the words of English Novelist and Poet, Emily Brontë who lived between 1818 and 1848. As she tried to define what death is, she was convinced untimely death; perhaps was like losing one’s identity.

Her words appear to have been stamped by the words of Stewart Alsop, an American newspaper columnist and political analyst who shed some light on how painful an untimely death can be.

“A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless,” Stewart Alsop wrote. In my over 40 years of existence on earth, I have seen, felt and touched death – several of those encounters left me battered, as my world crumbled. I had an encounter with the Angel of Death on April 7, 2015 after work. Yes, I met him face-to-face but this time, with the only option to battle and overpower him.

That very moment appeared in a flash but left me in anguish – forcing several memories deep down within me. On this day, I came to terms with how poor and innocent souls have perished because they were wrongly accused or branded as thieves or armed robbers – what a destiny!

This is my crazy story. A night after Easter, I was forced to stop in my tracks on my way home after work, as it rained heavily.

With taxis rarely available, I jumped onto a waiting trosky to my destination. As I sat close to the driver in the front seat; another male passenger who joined me along they journey got busy on his cell phone throughout the trip. The more I became uncomfortable with his phone conversation, the more the young man in his mid-twenties pierced my ears with words that made me suspect he was cajoling a lady.

“I have no business to eavesdrop on someone’s conversation”, I told myself. But I took a consolation from the fact that it was just a 10-minute journey. Lo and behold, the journey was over.

My talkative trotro neighbour was first to alight as all the thirteen passengers on onboard stepped onto the roadside filled with red-clayey mud.

I hurriedly jumped down and started running home whilst it continued drizzling. My area was badly affected by the power rationing, as the entire neighbourhood was engulfed in darkness.

I had earlier spoken to a co-tenant, an elderly woman to open the house’ main gate so I wouldn't get drenched in the rains.

As fast as I ran in my Olympic-like marathon, I could hear a man shouting on top of his voice beaconing people to apprehend a suspected thief. His rooftop shout was enough for me to abort the marathon. I looked around without seeing anyone, except my very self. And the sound drew closer and louder.

Here was the man who sat close to me in the trosky – he was at this moment in the company of club-wielding men heading my direction. I was certainly their target – they had come to attack me because they suspect I had stolen the gentlemen’s wallet stocked with Gh200.

Desperate situations they say calls for desperate moves – I hastily introduced myself as Ohemeng Tawiah and pulled my staff ID card with an embossed photograph. But my accusers would not take this, insisting I hand over all the contents of my wallet.

I came face-to-face with the reality of the words spoken by Greek Philosopher, Socrates who once lived at Athens, that “the hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows”. Yes! I continued to tango with my accusers whose numbers had increased from a few, to many; as their thirst to lynch me mounted. But as the popular saying goes “those to whom we say farewell, are welcomed by others”.

An elderly man pulled up. Yes he saved me. He and his family were ardent listeners to the narrative between myself and my accusers and suddenly exclaimed “Yes I know this is Ohemeng Tawiah. Yes I am familiar with his voice”.

That was how I was saved from the teeming crowd yearning to lynch me. They turned the tables and rather insisted the gentleman apologize to me. My spirits were exonerated but could an apology have resulted in my resurrection if I had been lynched?

A Good Samaritan later handed over a wallet he picked by the roadside to an information center in the community. The wallet contained less than Gh40 yet the owner claimed it contained Gh200.

The haste to mete out instant justice, I sense, could have sent many an innocent soul to their graves prematurely. Many have died untimely because they were not given the opportunity to prove their innocence. Divine intervention saved me.