'My father's body was brought home for burial on Christmas Day' : The Standard

If Janet Okumu could meet Santa and ask for a birthday present, no doubt it would be one more Christmas celebration with her father. It is 21 years since he died, but the details of the tragic day are still fresh in her mind. They are so fresh that she does not see the meaning of Christmas anymore. “There is nothing unique about this day,” Janet says. For her, Christmas is like that bad dream you are forced to relive every time you close your eyes.

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Janet’s father, Raphael Okumu, she says, was a Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) examiner. During the December holidays in 1997, he was away in Nairobi marking national examinations. He used to travel on December 16 and be back home in Homa Bay on December 29. But this time he did not. “From what we were told, he died in the bus, on his seat. Other passengers thought he was asleep, but when the bus arrived in Nairobi, one of them tried to wake him but he did not move. His body was already cold,” Janet recalls. “When people were celebrating Christmas on December 25 that year, that is the day when my father’s body was being brought home in a casket.” Janet has kept the photo of her father in an album. Behind the photo she has written a special message. It partly reads: "I will never in life find somebody to fill the gap you left. I have no strong words to show how I feel daddy… I will never find a love like yours, love you daddy."

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Janet, however, insists she has no ill feelings on others who celebrate, considering the fact that she is a Christian. “It is only that it means nothing to me, what it does is remind me of the pain,” she says. She knows she will heal some day, "but that will take time". 

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Christmas DayDeathTragedy