I was jailed for the death of my only daughter –Pamela Mojekwu, former celebrity fitness expert
These days in her Chicago apartment that she shares with her young son,
Emeka, Pamela Mojekwu stares through the windows, watching the early
morning sunrise streak into her living
room, reminding her of another gracious day to be thankful and hopeful.
Her heart has deep scars of tragedies, her face lights up from the beams
of the sunrise, with a promise of better days ahead. In her 59th year,
she’s still running against the winds of life, living, but in control of
her speed in this race.
“ I have learnt to get to my treasured
destiny at my own time. You can’t hurry sunrise anymore: not with what
life privileged me these years.”
“Jebose, when life deals you
lemon, you learn fast how to make lemonade. Life certainly dealt me with
tragic circumstances within the past decade and these situations taught
me how to make the lemonades of life: Life is bittersweet”.
Mojekwu was Nigeria’s first celebrated aerobics and fitness expert. In
the eighties, she was famous with her weekly fitness columns in
Nigeria’s Vanguard Newspaper, her television appearances on Lagos
Television and subsequently, Morning Ride, NTA, Lagos.
She also
dashingly encouraged a new generation of Nigerians then struggling with
obesity to define their values, be proud of their weight, called an
obese nation to action for better living through intense daily
exercises. She brutalised our bodies and empowered us as she tortured
us, affectionately. Mojekwu was everywhere with a new brand: Miss Keep
Fit.
She was in all major networks every Saturday morning,
motivating the nation with information on wellness, weight loss and
fitness.
While she woke our nation to fitness exercises, she
was also silently facing her own internal family health challenges: she
hid these from her clients and the nation with infectious bright smiles
that spread over her face every Saturday morning.
Her only
child then, Tina, was very sick. Every day was great expectation with
regards to Tina’s health issues: “Tina was sick. I took her to Eko
Hospital. The hospital diagnosed her illness as “sicklier foot” disease.
I didn’t understand what that meant: she was losing weight all the time
from this strange illness. We continued with the recommended treatment
for my only child and daughter then. The more we treated her, the worse
her condition grew.”
During a chanced visit to Eko Hotels, she
picked a magazine from the lobby and began to read as she waited for her
host. Inside the magazine, she read about a Dr. Smith of Children’s
Hospital in Chicago discussing about Vascular Necrosis. The symptoms he
shared in the magazine were consistent with Tina’s. Mojekwu decided that
evening to seek the doctor in Chicago. Few weeks later, they arrived at
the children’s hospital and her daughter was diagnosed with sickle cell
anaemia.
Mojekwu would abandon life to begin care management
for her daughter. No mother would watch her daughter go through the
rigours of sickle cell treatment and pain without a heart ache. Tina was
regularly in the hospital. Her sickle cell disease was progressive and
fast, weakening her immune system. Pamela described one of those scary
moments watching her daughter in pains.
“America’s health
system doesn’t lie to you. The doctors were blunt. They told me that her
sickle cell was in advanced stages and she may not live. But she lived
until that accident in 2009.”
Tina battled sickle cell disease
throughout her life: most of her adult years were spent inside the
emergency room of the hospital. Pamela lived these years with her in the
hospital. During one of their visits to the ER, Tina went into coma and
was placed on life support at the ICU. Doctors encouraged Pamela to go
home and decide switching off the life support the next day. Tina
miraculously woke up from her coma at midnight, cried for her mother!
The uncertainties of life began to pepper her five years ago when she
lost her husband, Tina’s father, to cancer disease. Two years after
losing her husband, on a humid July Sunday, Pamela and Tina honoured an
invitation from her cousin to visit. She had worked all day; end of her
shift, she went home and picked Tina to rendezvous with her family.
After the visit, Pam and Tina began a journey back to their home. It was
the last time mother and child would ride together. Something happened
and she swerved her car into a ditch and crashed. It was fatal. Her only
daughter who beat death few months earlier would not survive the wreck.
She died on impact, at the scene of the accident. Pamela sustained
serious brain injuries and collapsed lung.
“Jebose, I didn’t
know to this day how the accident happened. I woke up in a hospital only
to be told that the passenger with me in the vehicle died at the scene
of the accident. That passenger was my only daughter. Christine was
dead! Because of the severity of my injuries: collapsed lungs, broken
ribs and brain injuries, I was placed in medically induced coma. I would
see her in my coma stage. She was right there with me. She took me to
the scene of the accident to see the wrecked car. She stayed with me
until her funeral: she then appeared again and said to me: “Mom, your
road will be long and hard but you will make it.”
Soon after
Tina’s death, the City of Chicago arraigned her at the Cook County Court
House and charged her with vehicular homicide: it alleged Pam was
responsible for Tina’s death. She was thrown into jail. Life had no
meaning to her: she barely remembered anything. She was suicidal. The
prison officers placed her in a 23-hour solitary confinement, watching
her every hour: “I was locked down for 23 hours every day, the first
month. I was only allowed one hour to shower and exercise. Meals would
be passed to me through a hole in the middle of my cell door. It was
horrible: a mother being jailed for an auto accident that killed her
only daughter, sustaining serious brain injuries that affected her
memories. I was a volcano, waiting to erupt.”
Pamela Mojekwu mourned her daughter while in jail: the horrible experiences triggered depression.
“Dealing with Tina’s death, initially, was extremely difficult for me. I
would stay in my bed for days, covered up, could not eat, and couldn’t
bath. The experience is beyond explanation. It’s a sad feeling that
words can’t capture with description. It’s a unique moment in our lives
and I pray no woman buries her child, especially her sick daughter.”
Her painful ordeals redirected her new life. Through these challenges,
she moved her aging mother to a nursing home for assisted living. Her
mother had developed Alzheimer’s disease. Last month, one of her younger
sisters died. She was buried this week.
Through rehabilitation and treatments, she is slowly recovering from the emotional traumas of her circles of life.
“Jebose, who would go through losing a husband, a daughter in an
accident, brain injuries, sending your mother to a nursing home because
you could no longer care for her , locked up for the death of your
daughter and not be an emotional wreck? I was a disaster that happened.”
Part of life’s redirection is her new found platform for sickle cell
advocacy. She has become a passionate psalm for children, especially
African children affected by sickle cell. She set up a nonprofit
foundation in memory of her late daughter; Christine Sickle Cell
Foundation.
“It’s the best way to honour her painful times on
earth. I was blessed to have her in my life. My mission now is to travel
to Nigeria within the next few months and open an office where this
foundation would be able to help our people through information,
education and assist in providing a manageable care for those with
sickle cell disease. I want to encourage everyone going through any
circumstance in life or similar to mine, that it’s not over until God
says otherwise. Be strong. I am strongest today, despite the tragedies.”
7/05/2014
I was jailed for the death of my only daughter –Pamela Mojekwu, former celebrity fitness expert
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