When Grief Visits

I remember.

I remember so clearly like it was yesterday.

I had walked into our apartment tired and hungry that hot afternoon, my neighbor’s generator was on, causing so much noise in the compound and this infuriated me even more as there was electricity so why was his generator on?

The atmosphere felt unusually still. The children in the compound were unusually quiet.

I walked into the apartment through the living room entrance and a feeling of dread enveloped me as I saw the living room filled with visitors sitting quietly. I walked in and greeted everyone, but no one answered. They looked up at me with fear in their eyes, as if to say something but no one said anything. My uncles, my father’s friends, my neighbors, even the one his generator was on, all seated quietly, avoiding my eyes. They all heard my greeting but no one answered.

That was unusual.

I couldn’t help but wonder what they were all doing here this afternoon when everyone should be at work.

I had closed early from work that day, hoping to come home to eat and rest and then go visit my mum and brother in the hospital but seeing so many people in my home made me realize that rest was far from me.

Something was off.

There was something no one was saying and I couldn’t ask. I just walked into the kitchen to get something to eat first. I was too tired to think and too hungry to speak.

But when I walked into the kitchen and I saw my mum standing over the gas cooker, making lunch, my heart leaped for joy, I ran to hug her and she smiled at me. I hadn’t seen her in this kitchen in over a month. I hadn’t seen her smile in over a month. It brought joy to me, it brought a smile to my face and my earlier thoughts of hunger and fatigue were immediately forgotten. I didn’t need rest, I needed my mum at home. I needed her stories and her delicious meals. I smiled again and hugged her. I had missed her so much the past month, she had been in the hospital with my sick brother and now she was home, which meant everything was fine now.

I asked her how she was and she nodded fine.

I looked around in anticipation, wondering where my brother was, I left the kitchen and went to the room to go hug him. To go welcome him back home. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the rooms, he wasn’t in any toilet. I walked back to the living room and I noticed my Dad had been sitting there with my two other brothers, holding them tightly to him. But my sick brother, the one my mother has been in the hospital with for over a month, the one I know she came home with, the one I was walking around the house looking for, wasn’t there.

I walked back to the kitchen, willing my legs to carry me. All of a sudden they felt so heavy but I pushed them forward, back to where my mum stood over the cooking gas and I asked the question that was ringing in my head.

“Where is Ifeanyi?”

She was making noodles with sardines and was putting the sardines into the pot with a smile on her face and that was when I realized the smile wasn’t reaching her eyes. The smile seemed so genuine yet it wasn’t reaching her eyes. Her eyes looked so sad, so swollen yet she was smiling and cooking.

She wasn’t looking at me when she called my full name. Only she ever called my full name in that manner, she said something inaudible and I cursed the neighbor’s generator for being so loud. I told her I hadn’t heard her and just at that moment, right on cue, my neighbor turned off his generator. Silence enveloped the environment, but fear gripped me and I asked her to repeat what she had said, that was when I heard some voices in the background saying “don’t tell her yet, wait let her rest, she is just returning from work, let her eat first”. I walked slowly to the balcony with a puzzled look on my face and for the first time saw that my mum’s friends were seated there, with sadness written over their faces. I turned to look at my mum but she was smiling. She was smiling and staring at the noodles in the pot.

She was doing something so normal yet it felt out of place.

I felt my chest tighten, “ mummy, what is wrong?” I remember asking so quietly, almost like a whisper, almost like a prayer, hoping that nothing would be wrong, hoping and praying that nothing would be wrong. She said my full name again, this time I could hear the tears in her voice, I could feel the sadness it conveyed, I saw the tears drop from her eyes and rolled down her smiling face.

“Odinakachukwu nwa’m, your brother Ifeanyi is dead”.

I heard her, I knew I did but I hoped I didn’t, I hoped she hadn’t said what I heard, I hoped she hadn’t called my name in her usual loving manner. She knew I heard her so when I asked her to repeat what she had said, she said nothing and just continued with her cooking. I watched her bring out four plates to dish out the food, I watched her turn off the gas and carry the hot pot to the counter with her bare hands and I wondered how she always did that and never got burned. I wondered how she could do something so normal, something so usual, when she hadn’t said anything normal to me when nothing was going on as normal. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath, I hadn’t realized I had taken a few steps backward and held onto the railing of the gate for support as my legs felt like jelly, I hadn’t realized I had sunk to the ground while looking at her dishing out the noodles in such a normal way.

But I remember my scream. I remember I closed my eyes and screamed so loud hoping it would loosen the knot I felt in my chest. I screamed so loud hoping my scream would reach the heavens. I screamed so loud hoping that Ifeanyi would hear my screams wherever he was and wake up from his deep sleep. I felt my heart had been ripped out of my chest, I felt I was in an unending nightmare I needed to wake up from. My heart was beating against my chest so fast and I screamed again. This time hoping my mum would tell me to stop screaming and it was all a joke. But I opened my eyes to see her looking at me with a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. She looked at me so dearly, her first child sitting on the floor, her dear Odinaka holding on to the rails and screaming into the silence of the afternoon. She couldn’t speak, she just looked at me with teary eyes and smiling lips and nodded.

It was as if the air in my lungs had been sucked out as my eyes made way for the tears to flow freely. I don’t remember crying so much in my life. I was holding on to the rails so tight as if I wanted to squeeze them. But even as powerful as grief was, it doesn’t give you the power to bend iron. My head was in a mess, and my joints were weak but I held on to the rails like my life depended on it as the tears flowed freely down my face. The pain in my heart was growing, my chest was getting tighter as the space in there was too small to contain such a magnitude of pain that was growing. I wanted to hit my chest, I wanted to squeeze it and tell it to make more room, so the pain won’t block my lungs. I wanted to rip my silk shirt open, maybe it would make room for the pain in me, but my elbows felt so shaky and I couldn’t let go of the rails.

I needed to make space for the pain, I thought my chest would explode, I needed to let go of the rails but I felt my body would fall apart. I was losing my mind, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what action to take.

I am the oldest child, I am supposed to be the smartest one, the one that makes the tough decisions, the one that stood strong for the rest, the one that guided the rest and protected them, but how could I do that when I couldn’t make a simple decision of letting go off the rails and standing on my feet? How could I do that when I couldn’t rip my shirt off to make room for the growing pain in my chest? I could feel the pain in my throat now, I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t push it down, I felt helpless.

I started hitting my head on the rails as I screamed, hoping to be free of the pain that was enveloping me, hoping to hit the right decision in my head, hoping the physical pain I was inflicting on myself would override the emotional pain I was feeling. I was hoping, praying, screaming, and hitting.

My mum and her friends rushed to me and started pulling me away from the rail, I could feel someone loosening my grip on the rail, I felt so weak, so helpless, so useless.

My mum pulled me up and held me in a tight embrace and cried. I held on to her long frame so tight, I was in so much pain internally, so much pain physically and the pain in my chest just wouldn’t stop. Why wouldn’t it stop? Haven’t I had enough? Isn’t this pain enough?

And that’s the thing about grief, it doesn’t understand when it’s enough. It doesn’t know when to stop. It just envelopes you and gives you more pain than you can handle.

We held onto each other and cried like babies.

A mother had lost her child, a daughter had lost her brother.

I watched visitors troop in and out of our home the following day, I sat in the middle of my two other brothers who held on to me as if telling me not to die too. It is funny how the death of a loved one could make you speechless. How it could make your head so filled with imagination yet so blank, how it could make you see everyone in their true form, a sack of bones and organs that could drop dead at any minute. It makes you wonder what their last words were, what your last moments together were like, what you could have done differently, make you wonder how you made that person feel, what were they thinking before they stopped breathing, and could they have held on a little longer? Fought a little harder? How do you move on in life without them? How do you reconcile the feeling of never seeing them again? Never hearing them laugh, talk or even argue?.

The mundane things become special, you hold onto memories of them but slowly can’t visualize their faces without looking at a picture frozen in time.

People squeezed money into my hand as if it’ll make me feel better. As if they were trying to bribe me for something, anything, I don’t know. The older women told stories of when they lost their children, while my mum went about receiving visitors and serving meals. But no one spoke of losing a brother. No one spoke of losing a sibling, your flesh and blood, someone you’ve always known from the moment he was a little crying baby in the hands of your mother.

That day when everyone gathered around to welcome a new life. Now they are gathered to mourn that life and no one told me what it felt like to lose a brother. No one told that story or looked at me to tell me it’ll get better.

They just squeezed money in my hand, squeezed my shoulder lightly, and told me to be strong for my siblings. I saw my boss from the workplace walk in to pay his condolences and thought of how he had called me to find out why I hadn’t shown up to work that morning.

It still felt strange to answer calls and tell them I had lost my brother. It still felt so strange as they went quiet and stammered and told me how sorry they were for my loss.

Everything felt strange.

Nothing felt normal.

I remember the day he was to be buried.

I had woken up that morning still holding on to his picture in my hands. I got on my knees and prayed. I cried to the heavens, I begged God as I’ve never done before, I pledged my life, I pledged my money, I pledged everything I could think of, and I just wanted my brother back. I quoted the bible, the part he brought the dead back to life. I spoke in tongues and dug my nails into my bed sheets till I ripped them apart.

I told him to prove himself, and bring my brother back to life. Bring him back to his siblings as we can’t go through this life without him. We couldn’t imagine not seeing his face again.

I begged him to bring him back to his mother as she couldn’t bear the pain of losing a child that she bore. She went about her day trying not to cry, smiling at visitors, and making meals like everything was normal when we both knew nothing was normal.

Oh, I begged God to bring him back to his father who had paid his school fees for that term and even paid his WAEC fees. The man looked fallen, downcast, and hadn’t uttered a word to me in three days. Just sat and cried with men telling him to be strong for his family. Telling him to be a man.

But if there was a God out there, he was too busy with other things. He ignored me and made me look foolish. My aunt walked in and saw me praying for my brother to be brought back to life with his picture in my hands. I heard her laugh. She knew I was wasting my time. I wish I had known.

Our tradition forbade my mum and her other living children from attending his burial so we sat in the living room with well-wishers while my dad went to the cemetery with my uncles and his friends.

They went to bury him.

Oh, this felt so surreal.

It felt like a nightmare I was never waking up from.

They called over the phone to let us know he had been lowered to the ground.

6ft down

That was when I knew I was never waking up from this nightmare. That was when I accepted he wasn’t coming back to life.

For the first time that day my mum let out a loud wail and no one held her back. She stood on her bare feet and looked up to the ceiling. It felt like she could see the sky from inside the building. It felt like she could see God and was speaking to him directly. The tears dropped from her eyes into her ears, down the side of her face, down to the round neck of her black top. She let out a loud wail like a wounded person. Her wound, we couldn’t see but we could feel.

A mother burying her child.

For the first time in three days, she accepted reality. She accepted he was gone. I no longer saw the strong woman that had been moving around and making meals as if nothing had happened. I no longer saw the woman that smiled at visitors who came to pay condolence visits. I no longer saw the woman that joked about all the money the visitors were squeezing in my hands.

I saw a helpless woman. A wounded woman. A woman that was overtaken by grief. A woman that had lost her child after a month’s battle in the hospital. I saw a woman that was summoning all the strength she could muster to say a prayer for her dead child.

She raised her shaky hands by her side with her palms wide open and looking up to the heavens she said with a much rather calm voice “ If it pleases you that I would bury the child that I carried in my womb for 9 months, gave birth to after-hours in labor and brought up to this age, then it is fine. I would bury him” then she looked down with eyes blinded by tears, shook her head and gave a deep sigh.

The rest of the prayer went by like a breeze.

Reality had hit.

We had been visited by grief. A visitor that would never leave. The visitor who wouldn’t tell her own story of losing a child. The visitor that wouldn’t squeeze money in my hand. The visitor that will sit in our midst forever after everyone else has gone. Sometimes it’ll be invisible and we will see nothing, we would feel nothing, but other times it would rear its ugly head up and make its presence ever known.

Reality had hit and grief had taken over.