Grief
1
My heart is broken into tiny pieces
Or perhaps it has simply burst into a million tiny pieces, I cannot seem to tell which it is
All I know is that I can no longer feel
My face is numb from crying, as my heart, my body has gone into frozen shock
I wonder, am I in some weird otherworldly space? Or is this my reality on earth
I am stuck in limbo. Neither knowing nor going, just static
I want to wail but how can I if my heart is numb, unfeeling
My grieve is without feeling, an emotion that seems to come from an unknown place deep in my soul
An emotion I am afraid to name because it makes it all so real.
2
What is grief, if not fear realized.
Ade! You have left this world and I know now what fear tastes like
It is bitter and vile
It knows my name and has called me forth
I am shattered!
I gnash my teeth sun up to sun down
I no longer wear colors
Like David, I have left my clothes for rags and poured ashes on my head
Like Job, I entreat God and ask why I have been chosen as the unfortunate one
I wail your name, hoping like Lazarus, you would somehow come forth
I no longer have any fear
Grief has taken away all my emotions and left me empty
3
Ade, do you remember when I said I would never put my business on social media?
We were on our way to church that Sunday morning, when I saw Adesua’s Instagram post. She had made such a detailed post about her loss and grief
I said, ‘’hian! na wa oh aunty. What could strangers possibly contribute to help you, that’s making you tell us all this.’’
Ade, it has barely been three months since you left, and here I am publicizing my grief
I am sitting in your favorite futon, feverishly typing away on Instagram
I have narrated my grief and how death has snatched you away from our future
Now I am trying to put into words what you meant to me
I have even created a blog about our lives
There is a support group of women, individually camped in my dms attempting to comfort me
They have shared personal stories with me about their own grief
They tell me the grief will never end, it is a cycle
They tell me that in 4 years, I might be in the isle of a supermarket and start to cry because I heard your favorite music blast from the speakers
My love, they are not lying
It has been 9 months and I still refuse to lie on your side of the bed
I have refused to wash the bedding we used last. I have immortalized them
I still cry under the blanket
I stay still, as I smell your scent, in hopes that somehow you would materialize and ask me why I am behaving like a baby
To which I would retort, ‘I am your baby’
I stay under and wail; as I mourn the dreams we would never live in together
4
Ade people are trying to tell me how to tell me how to grieve.
Onose saw my post on Instagram and says I should not have. I overhead Sandra the other day say, she wonders why it’s been 2 years now, and I am still acting like you just died
But I do not understand these people
My love, you were the love of my life, should I pretend that the world has not been violently upended from beneath me?
Should I pretend that the cruel hand of death has not violently snatched you away from me?
That I would still come home after a long day commuting in Lagos traffic, to see you smiling at me from the kitchen counter as you prepare dinner
And why should my grief have a timeline
Why should I grieve in decorum? Does death know decorum?
They say time heals all wounds
I do not believe them, but time will tell
Until then, I will continue to mourn you the way I loved you in life
Sometimes loud
Sometimes under the blanket, groaning out moans of grief
Sometimes I’ll cry in the car park, where we occasionally made out, like hormone-crazed teenagers
Sometimes overwhelmed, sobs wracking through my entire body
So much so that like an asthmatic patient, I breathe in gasps
Sometimes softly, in the bathroom at work during my lunch break
Other times, in front of people, uncaring of their opinions
At times, like now, online
Ade, oko mi
As I showed you my love in multiple forms, whilst you were alive
In the same manner, will i grieve.
