“He worked all his life for his children. Barely a month after his burial, they dug him up so they could sell his house.”
“I won’t die for my children.”
He said it without hesitation.
I was stunned.
For many parents, those words may sound almost unthinkable. Parents make sacrifices for their children every day. They work, struggle, deny themselves comfort and sometimes go without the basic necessities of life simply to give their children a better future.
But sitting beside me was a man who had witnessed enough death, funerals and family drama to arrive at a very different conclusion.
His name is Baba Ojo, an ambulance driver who travels extensively across Nigeria providing funeral services.
For years, he has transported the dead, attended funerals and witnessed families deal with the loss of loved ones. He has seen people cry uncontrollably at funerals. But he has also seen what happens after the tears dry.
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One particular experience, he told me, permanently changed his understanding of life, family and sacrifice.
We were having a conversation while he was on his way to one of his trips when he made the startling declaration that he intended to enjoy his life until his dying day.
I asked him why.
His response was simple but unsettling.
He said he would do everything within his means for his children, but he would not destroy himself trying to build a future for them at the expense of his own happiness.
Then he told me a story.
The house he built for his family
According to Baba Ojo, a family once hired him to provide ambulance services for the burial of their father.
He did his job. The burial was completed. He was paid and went his way.
He thought that was the end of the matter.
It was not.
About a month later, the deceased man’s children contacted him again and asked him to return to their home.
When he arrived, they told him something that left him bewildered.
They wanted to exhume their father’s remains and rebury him in a public cemetery.
The reason?
They wanted to sell the house.
According to Baba Ojo’s account, their father’s remains had been buried on the property, and the children wanted the land and house cleared for sale.
He could hardly understand what he was hearing.
A man had spent years working and building a house. He had raised children and, according to the account, done his best to provide them with a good life.
He died.
His children buried him.
Then, barely a month later, they returned to his grave—not to mourn him, but to dig him up.
The reason, as Baba Ojo understood it, was that the property had to be sold.
Eventually, he accepted the job. The family paid his bill, the man’s remains were exhumed and he was reburied in a public cemetery.
The house was sold.
But something else was buried that day: the ambulance driver’s old belief that every sacrifice parents make for their children will necessarily be honoured.
What happens to our sacrifices after we are gone?
That experience, he told me, changed the way he viewed life.
He began to understand that everything human beings acquire eventually becomes meaningless when death comes. Houses, cars, businesses and money cannot follow anyone into the grave.
But he also began questioning whether children should be allowed to disregard the wishes or memory of a parent simply because there is property to sell or money to be made.
To him, there was something deeply painful about a father spending his lifetime providing shelter for his family, only for his remains to be moved after death because his children wanted to sell the property he built.
“Life is vanity upon vanity,” he told me in essence.
But he also believed that there should be some respect for the wishes and memory of the dead.
And that brought him back to his controversial declaration.
“I won’t die for my children.”
I tried to persuade him not to allow the actions of one family to completely change his perception of parenthood.
He would not budge.
He repeated himself.
“I won’t die for my children.”
His position, however, was not that parents should abandon their children.
Far from it.
He said he would continue to work hard, support his children and give them the best he could.
But he would also live.
He would eat well when he could.
He would enjoy his money.
He would take care of himself.
He would not spend his entire lifetime denying himself every form of happiness simply to leave behind an inheritance whose ultimate fate he could not control.
And perhaps that is where Baba Ojo’s story becomes uncomfortable.
Parents are not machines
Across our society, many parents spend their productive years building houses, paying school fees, establishing businesses and accumulating wealth for their children.
Some postpone their own happiness indefinitely, believing that their children will eventually appreciate the sacrifices.
But what happens when they are gone?
Will the children preserve everything?
Will they honour their wishes?
Will they remember the sacrifices?
Will they protect what their parents spent decades building—or sell it within months?
Nobody knows.
Baba Ojo’s story is therefore not simply about a house that was sold or a corpse that was moved.
It is about the uncertainty surrounding the things we spend our lives building after we are gone.
More importantly, it is a reminder that parents are human beings, not machines created solely to provide for their children.
There is nothing wrong with working hard for one’s children.
There is nothing wrong with wanting them to succeed.
But perhaps parents should also remember that they have only one life.
A parent who spends an entire lifetime making sacrifices may eventually realise that he or she postponed every moment of happiness for a future that never arrived.
The dead cannot make the decisions
The father in Baba Ojo’s story could not return to challenge the sale of his house.
He could not protest when his grave was opened.
He could not ask his children why his remains were being moved.
He could not remind them of the dreams he had when he built the house.
He was dead.
His children were alive.
And the living made the decision.
That is the part of Baba Ojo’s story that continues to disturb me.
Perhaps his conclusion is too absolute.
Perhaps one family’s actions should not define an entire generation of children.
But after spending years around death and funerals, Baba Ojo has clearly witnessed things that have changed the way he understands life.
As we parted, he remained firm.
“I will do my best for my children,” he said. “But I won’t die for them.”
I walked away from that encounter with a question that has stayed with me:
Are we building our entire lives for our children—or are we also living the lives we were given?
Every parent will eventually leave this world.
When that day comes, the house may be sold, the business may change hands, the money may disappear and the plans may be forgotten.
We cannot control everything that happens to what we leave behind.
But we can control how we live while we are here.
Perhaps loving our children does not mean sacrificing every part of ourselves for them.
Perhaps it means providing what we can, teaching them values, preparing them for life—and still allowing ourselves to live.
Because in the end, we only get one life to live.
Written by Festus Edovia, ANIPR, FICM
