What Really Killed Kefee?

The question which the title of this article bears leaves a lot to be desired. Kefee, the lovely Branama singer is dead. That cannot be changed, neither can it be made better. Grief, they say, have five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.), and with Kefee, I think we're going to experience the full array of emotions.

We're not in denial anymore. That came in accepting the news that she's dead. Thanks to viral journalism, or what we practice in Nigeria, the cold hard truth have been hammered home. Kefee is dead, and she's never coming back.

But then we as a country and a people who are given to daily grief and the threat of war, move swiftly through those stages. We're past anger too...the wave of inner turmoil and chaotic disharmony that we're supposed to feel collectively and as individuals have been dissipated all too quickly and been taken over by events.

Events which can be likened to the trickiest, and most horrible of the stages – Bargaining. On a personal level, bargaining can be such a messy phase. We begin to ask questions that can never be answered. We search our souls for reason and causes, beating ourselves along the way to the next phase.

If only we had sought medical attention sooner… If only we got a second opinion from another doctor…If only we had tried to be a better person toward them…if only we didn't steal their cupcakes and ate it with guilty relish...if only we didn't take a shit before they did..

Secretly, we may make a deal with God or our higher power in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. This is a weaker line of defense to protect us from the painful reality.

But when a celebrity dies, the public take on the bargaining responsibility, all to ill effects. A lot of close friends, mostly drawn from the celebrity kind, take to the press to ask 'what would have been'...the religious folk and clergymen also come out, claiming that they had seen the death coming from afar. Or a witch had cried, and so a public figure must die.

Someone had already filled those boots. She's none other than Nigerian female talking drummer, Ara, who says she actually predicted the death of the star singer and sent her a strong warning to take her prayer life very serious.

“Early this year, I had a dream and contacted Efe of NOW Music as he’s the only one I could call and told him to please organise a forum for all musicians to assemble and pray against death amongst us (please confirm from Efe).

“It’s sad we had to lose my girlfriend, sister and colleague…so sad. When a revelation comes like that, it means there is a way out.” So said Ara. The prophetess whose clairvoyance is limited to the announcement of doom, but not the attainment of a working solution to avert the disaster.

What nonsense!

But a good question that has remained unanswered: What really killed Kefee? Answering that would be a good way to bargain positively and begin the healing process.

There are two sources of information to that effect. The initial word in the news states that Kefee was done by pre-eclampsia, a form of hypertension mostly associated with pregnancy. We got wind that Kefee was pregnant, and developed complications while on an international flight that made her meet her fate.

But her public team has another conflicting detail to that. In the words of Adeline Adelicious Adebayo, (Kefee’s UK Manager): In contrast to all earlier rumors and stories in circulation, I do state that

That just puts a weird spin on everything. Indirectly, even the doctor who stated that Kefee had a medical condition has been called a damn good liar.

I'm not a doctor. In fact, medical stuff tends to creep me out. Not the graphic side of it like rashes, fractures, blood or insides -- I can handle all that. What I've always found unsettling is the uncertainty of so much of what doctors do.

They observe ... and that observation may be incorrect. They judge, based on that observation, as well as their own experience and what they know from the textbooks ... and that, too, maybe incorrect.

And, finally, they diagnose ... but that too, may turn out incorrect because they're asked to play percentages and likelihoods.

Kefee was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. That fact cannot be changed, but what did her in still remains a mystery.

We can either decide to let it go, accepting ignorance as a means to 'bargaining', and moving on to depression, or we can choose from which source we will like to draw belief from.

Until that happens, or a more credible source (usually backed by the autopsy report, or the death certificate) comes to the light, then the bargaining stage of grief cannot be fully experienced.

Questions always need to find answers. That way, the sun can rise up the next morning.