A renowned Nollywood actress, Eucharia Anunobi, has opened up about how she copes with the loss of her only child, Raymond, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 15 due to complications from sickle cell disease.
According to 59 years old Anunobi, in an interview on the WithChude podcast, her Christian faith has been a significant source of comfort and strength in dealing with the loss.
The actress emphasised that being a born-again Christian has opened her eyes to the ‘vanity of life’ and the temporal nature of worldly things and she believes she will see her son again.
Expressing gratitude for the memories she shared with her son and the peace that God has given her, Anunobi said “That is one of the things that being born again, being a true Christian, bequeaths you with. As you grow in the word, when you read the words of God in the Holy Bible continuously, not just reading it but meditatively reading it, practicing it.
“Obeying the instructions therein as they are being said to you and each time you ask the Holy Spirit to teach you to know greater things, you will get to know greater things, and the wisdom of God gets you to know the vanity of life.
“Those things you see everywhere, that people are clamoring for are only temporal, there is no need killing yourself. You then come to understand that if you lose a loved one, yes, you love them, but because you have grown in the word of God that tells you that yes, the body is gone but the spirit is not gone.
“The spirit and soul has gone to the One that gave it and you would still have connection with that spirit someday where it came from. When you grow in the word of God, it helps you and brings to you more accurately and powerfully the words of God that says ‘my peace I give to you’.
“When you have bereavement or things that bring undue sorrow, you do not sorrow because you know that they were just given to you for a short period of time and that someday you also will leave this atmosphere. That is what the wisdom of God teaches you.
“The comfort I have not to mourn unnecessarily or overtly over the loss of my only child as a single parent is that I know he is not gone. Yes, I know he is gone physically. I miss him, but I know the beautiful treasures of memories I have in my heart and I know because the word of God says I will see him again.”
Eucharia married Charles Ekwu, the father of Raymond, in 2000. They, however divorced after six years of marriage.
