Award-winning journalist Umaru Sanda Amadu has shared a deeply personal account of losing his father, Mallam Amadu, just a day before Ghana was struck by the August 6 helicopter tragedy.
Sanda’s father passed away peacefully on the morning of Tuesday, August 5, at the family home in Asutsuare Junction. The 81-year-old was a respected village Imam, a community elder, and the patriarch of a large family of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
The journalist recounted receiving the devastating news while preparing for an interview. “I told myself I had to be strong for my mother,” he wrote, but admitted breaking down upon seeing his father’s body, surrounded by grieving siblings.
Despite the pain, one of Sanda’s sisters offered a perspective that shifted the mood: “I will not cry for you. I will rejoice for you. You’ve died exactly the way I prayed for you to die — peacefully, beautifully.”
Sanda described his father’s final hours as serene — he woke up for dawn prayers, enjoyed breakfast with family, and went to take a nap from which he never woke. “No prolonged sickness, no hospital bed, no burden on anyone,” he wrote. “He was a fulfilled man who raised not just a family, but a community.”
Hundreds gathered the same day to pay their respects, and by the funeral on Friday, about a thousand people had come to pray. For Sanda, the turnout was proof of his father’s impact.
“It is painful. It is sad. But we will rejoice because he showed us the way,” he reflected. “When I die, I pray to go just like he did — in my bed, surrounded by my children and their children.”
