An ode to the velveted lives of our elders
Responding to Velvet by Ofem Ubi
“Everyone dies a good man/Tributes taught me that,” opens a quiet black and white film clocking in at just over two and half minutes. Its title, a reference to the fabric once reserved for members of nobility – soft, plush regalia – is fitting for its subject matter.
Velvet weaves images of a family's homestead, occupied by both elders and infants, and captures the long breadth of life in a poignant and stirring manner. Its creator, Ofem Ubi, harnesses the power of poetry to memorialise his maternal grandfather Odo, while reconciling that the aging patriarch is coming to the end of life.
As the soft guitar strums of Ben Howard’s ‘Promise’ plays, Ubi overlays his quiet, steadied verse unpacking all the ways in which his grandfather is aging, but also all the ways in which he has lived. Ubi’s word choice packs a punch while maintaining an air of respect and consideration. We see images of the slowly meandering patriarch shuffling barefoot on cool concrete as his grandson posits how his “mere breath is a blasphemy to death.” So in awe I was at hearing that line, I had to rewind multiple times just to take in every word, ruminating on that idea of life as a form of blasphemy to death.
As the artist has stated, the film was originally meant to be an homage to his grandmother and the place he once called home in Nigeria. But circumstances prevented this original idea from coming to fruition. Maintaining that desire to honour his elders, Ubi finds a deep rootedness while capturing his grandfather’s movements: the way he takes up space, languidly going through his daily routine. For an outsider, all of this might seem quotidian, unimportant even, but it is Ubi’s words that turn these moments into something entirely venerable. His camerawork and verse honour an aging population in a way that is so easy to neglect in the 21st century. We watch the grandfather run a dry razor against his velvety skin and hear his grandson question if his grandfather’s intent is to “prune his mistakes” or “retrieve his youth.” How many of us are afforded this opportunity to spend time with our elders and access their understanding of the world – the wisdom that they harbour?
In the west, I cannot help but think how cruelly we treat our elders, how little respect is given in many western cultures to those who have traversed the earth the longest. As of April 2021, two-thirds of Covid-related deaths in Canada occurred in care homes. As of March 2021, one-third of Covid-related deaths in Scotland, where I live, also occurred in care homes, which saw the virus spread like a wildfire through our aging population. In mid-July, it was revealed by Dominic Cummings that Boris Johnson held out on a second English lockdown because “the people who are dying are essentially all over 80.” Our governments, by their actions, tell us that the aging are expendable, sub-human.
My maternal grandfather passed away in February of this year from Covid. He spent approximately thirty of his last days on earth in a hospital, away from family. He was only in his late seventies. On the last day I wrote to him before his health rapidly declined, I asked my abuelo how he was feeling and told him I was praying for him every day (I still am).
He wrote back, a short message: “Gracias mijo cada día me siento mejor.” Thank you, my son, every day I feel better. I cannot articulate to you the pain I felt at his passing, the hot fiery embers of the anger that poured out from my body still linger on a half year later. In my culture, family is everything and, from a young age, we are taught to respect our elders, revere them. Both are integral to my understanding of what it is to be Mexican. I still find it impossible to reconcile the cruel way in which my abuelo passed from this world to the next. A patriarch – father to five children, Papá to thirteen grandchildren, bisabuelo to five great grandchildren. His funeral service should have been filled through the rafters, instead I watched on from five thousand miles away through a YouTube live stream.
If Velvet and Ofem Ubi have taught me anything, it is that to grow older is a glorious, regal, quiet act that deserves to be honoured again and again. I wish I could have had more time with my grandfather. I wish I could walk with him once more through the hot Chihuahua desert of his youth. I wish I could ask him all that I long to know, like “how did you find the strength to start life afresh somewhere so far from home?” But we cannot rewind life in hopes for a do-over, a chance to appreciate things through the eyes of loss. So, it is while we still have time with our elders remaining on this earth that we must bask in the solemnity which comes with many rotations around the sun, appreciating the soft, smooth touch of their rich velvety lives.
