Before Eighteen : My teenage struggle with the fear of Death.

I think i was thirteen the year I learned what sickle cell anemia really meant. We traditionally called people with sickle cell anemia "sickler" as kids in my Hausa neighborhood.

One of My friend; Moses, whose pet name was "Baba" had it - the sickle cell anemia. We used to joke about how he was allergic to pain, how he was fragile when we played football in front of "Maman yan-biyu's house. Sometimes we joked and laughed how he spent hours in the hospital with his parents, or how sometimes he’d walk like he was stepping on fire.
But underneath the laughter, I knew he was fighting something I couldn't understand - something bigger than our football field in the Church, bigger than our noisy Hausa neighborhood, bigger than either of us.

One afternoon after playing football in front of Maman yan-biyu's house, we were lying on the cracked bench at the side of the house, staring at clouds like we always did when we didn’t want to talk about anything important.

Then Baba said something casually that sent chill to my spine...
“You know, people like me aren’t supposed to live past eighteen.”

I turned my head so fast to look at Baba, and whispered in retortion... “What?”

He gave me this half-look and said... That’s what the old people say. He went further to say that, My uncle had it. Died at seventeen. My cousin had it and died before fifteen.
He had already internalized the fact that he was going to die soon.
He said My mom… she tries to act like it’s not a thing, but she watches the calendar too much.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just stared at the sky and imagined it folding in on itself.

That night, the fear came.

It wasn’t just about Baba anymore - it was about me too and some few friends that I'd known who are living with sickel cell anemia. If death could sit so close to him, it could sit next to me. I realized, for the first time, that being young wasn’t a shield. I wasn’t guaranteed anything - not tomorrow, not next week, not the chance to grow old and forget what it felt like to be scared of disappearing.

Every moment after that felt like it had a countdown ticking beneath it. I became obsessed with time. I’d lie in bed counting the years, the days, the minutes I thought I had left. I imagined funerals. I imagined my own. I thought about Baba's face in a casket, then forced the thought away with a phrase "I reject it in Jesus name"...

I stopped sleeping well. I walked through school like I was underwater. Even good days tasted like they were melting away too fast. I played my favorite sport (football) with fear of been injured so as not to die as a result of the injury.

One evening, Baba and I were at his place playing snooker he had made, with balls from Nivea roll-on deodorant. His crisis had passed, but he was still weak. He caught me staring at him too long, and he raised an eyebrow.

He said to me in Hausa... Domin menene kana kanló ni àka? “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I hesitated, then asked, Baka tsoro ne? “Aren’t you scared?”

He paused, looked out the other way like he needed to ask the trees for help answering.

“Sometimes,” he said quietly. “But being scared doesn’t help. It just makes the time you have feel worse.”

I didn’t understand that then. Not fully. But over the next few months, I watched him laugh with his sisters who are twins, he joined us to play football even when he could barely shoot straight or give accurate pass. We visited the game station to pay 25 naira to play football game in PlayStation two (PS2).

Baba didn’t live like someone waiting to die. He lived like someone who’d decided to squeeze every drop out of whatever time he had left.

And slowly, I started trying to do the same.

The fear is still there - quiet, like the distant hum of a trailer you can’t quite see. But I’m learning not to let it drive me. I tell people I love them, i had my first girlfriend at that moment. I had my first kiss too. When ever we out to play football. I played my best as though it might probably be my last.

Baba eventually died before reaching seventeen when i was in boarding school.

Baba taught me how to fight my fear of dying, And maybe he is dead now, but his memories continue to live and linger in my heart.

I realized that, i shouldn't count the years, but to make the years count. Even if the world says you’re not supposed to make it past eighteen. Even if you're scared.

Especially if you’re scared.