Former beauty queen Helen Prest-Ajayi on Monday marked one year anniversary of the death of her partner Tosin Ajayi.
Ajayi died at St Nicholas Hospital, Lagos on April 26, 2020.
“Yes it’s one year already! Unbelievable??? As I write, all the hackneyed expressions come to mind. ‘Death is a great leveller’, ‘concrete overcoat’, ‘It’s like yesterday’, ‘time waits for no-one’, ‘how time flies…,’” she wrote.
“We are told these words have been spoiled by over familiarity and are enjoined not to use them. But in poignant moments we reach out for the familiar to express our deepest emotions and find comfort. They are like my husband’s travelling jumper folded in his travel bag, or his slippers still leaning against the wall. They express thoughts and evoke memories that are universally understood at a much deeper level than we imagine.
“We hear them all the time and probably don’t give them a seconds thought, just like old jumpers and slippers, but it is when these are applied to our lives in times of acute distress that these words truly come to life. No other words will do.”
Prest-Ajayi recalled her daughters saying their father did “everything he wanted to do and lived life the way he wanted.”
“Dearest doc in loving you, I am gifted with memories that can never die. As we celebrate your life today I give God the glory, I give him all the praise,” she added.
Ajayi, founder of First Foundation Medical Centre, was buried 10 months after his death. The delay was caused by a legal battle launched by his estranged widow Yemisi and her five children.
Ajayi got married to Yemisi, a retired chief nursing officer with the Lagos State Government, more than four decades ago but the couple separated after 23 years.
He subsequently went into a relationship with Helen, and the two had a daughter together.
Although Ajayi and his first wife were separated, they were not divorced until the time of his death.
