you cannot soft launch grief.

this is the most painful thing i’ve had to write.

my grand dad died yesterday.

somehow this is the first time i’m saying it, i’ve not been able to post RIP, i’ve not been able to say it out loud, it doesn’t feel real. it’s very… it’s very “somehow’. i’ve always been able to explain my emotions-quantify them and intellectualize it. if i didn’t know how to explain it, i’d research; swim across 14 pdfs, ask every human generated artificial intelligence, until i find a name for the emotion i’m feeling. only if it had a name could i feel it. But today i can’t, today i cannot name this emotion, i cried so much yesterday i lost my voice, absolutely crazy because when i cried i didn’t speak, how unkind of my voice to betray me.

you know you cannot soft launch grief, you cannot deliver it in a way it can become exciting, there’s no way it can be more tolerable. death is final. it’s the only thing that truly breaks the veil of reality, so strong, such a reminder that at the end of the day you are just human. so definitive.

i only grew up with one grandpa, and one grandma, it’s always been my fathers mother and my mothers father. it’s all i’ve ever known, it’s been a long running joke with my siblings, how we only have two grand parents. yesterday that joke ends. now there’s no more lore- what do we fill the family dinning table with now? there is no longer grandpa. who would tell us stories now? i cannot adequately define my emotion - i’ve lost dear ones but it’s never been this close to home. it’s never been home. grandpa was home. grandpa is home.

when i was younger my mother often told me how my grandad always wanted to be a lawyer, how he was just not opportuned enough, he didn’t grow up with a lot so he settled, she inherited his dreams and i - hers. she tried to be a lawyer too, perhaps she inherited more than his dreams because my mother never became a lawyer neither did any of her siblings. life happened. i wish grandpa waited till i got called to the bar. i wish he waited to see that it might have taken two generations but now he has his own lawyer now. my grand dad would never see me become a lawyer and there’s no way to make that better. you couldn’t possibly manifest me out of my sadness. when i graduated university. he was one of the first people i told. before i even saw my result. i was ecstatic - i wanted him to know that he too had won. that he too had a grandson for a lawyer. after law school - i didn’t call, my exams were so hard i didn’t want to kill his hopes, i didn’t tell him.

i wish i did.

my grandad was funny. and even though i want to say ‘not funny like everyone assumes their relatives are… i want to say he was real funny.’ but i don’t care. i’m going to end it at he was funny. you see my mum once told me a story of how he went missing for 4 years when they lived in the north and he just showed up back one day. there were no phones apparently and he couldn’t communicate, my grandad loved roasted yam and bush meat in a special onion and pepper sauce. i always hated yams but because of him i would eat it. i never drank carbonated drinks but everytime i would visit him - he would give me malt and i would say ‘grandpa its carbonated’ he would reply ‘gini bu nke?’ always so quickly after. like he knew at the end of the day none of that mattered, what mattered was us, was family. my grandad also loved to nag, he loved to complain and i loved it about him. such a sweet sweet man. he liked his soup overly spiced and with oil and i only know this because one time i added so much oil and maggi into my soup and when my mother saw this with tears in her eyes she asked

‘who taught you that’.

‘nobody mummy, i just want it to be sweet’.

‘you act just like my father’.

my mother loved to punctuate her words with silence. she never had a loud voice too, always so calm, so self preserving. i wonder if she learnt that from her mother. i wonder if she finds scattered pieces of her parents in us. i wonder if that is all family really is, scattered personalities scattered in generations. ‘

the morning my mothers Father died. my mother had called me - she said he was sick and he was in coma, and maybe i should’ve known then. because where i’m from, grief is soft launched… it’s too heavy to be announced all at once. my mother said he was in coma. i wonder if she had rehearsed that’s what she would say or if it simply had come to her on the call, she needed something good enough so i wouldn’t be able to call him.

i found out my grandfather died in the middle of my friends wedding, the whole family was hiding it from me and everything felt weird. i opened my whatsapp - which is funny because i never open whatsapp. i opened my aunts status only to see ‘forever in my heart’. and for the first time i tasted grief, my eyesight became blurry, the music went silent, my hands; sweaty and there was this weight lodged in my chest and my arms and my back, everywhere. i felt it everywhere. i think there’s something about grief that makes everything unclear, i somehow couldn’t find my way out and when i did i cried till i couldn’t speak. the silence came after all the tears. until i said it couldn’t be possible. my grandfather couldn’t be gone. i was wrong. he was infact gone. he was not in coma, my mother lied.

but what other choice did she have ?

i’m not sure how to feel about everything - its almost like i’m holding on to something. it’s been over 24 hours since he passed yet it feels like i’m holding onto shame? why? why do i feel shame and anger and benevolence?

the night my grandad died i went back into my friends wedding and danced so much. because maybe if i danced like solomon. maybe if i pleased the lord, maybe he wouldn’t be gone, maybe i was wrong. maybe i saw the whatsapp status wrong, maybe it wasn’t my grandad. and before bed that night i too would pray…. i would pray but i’m not sure what the prayer would be. i would feel my eyes tighten and my lips quiver but no words would come in or out i would simply tighten my eyelids and pray…..and hope.

i lost my grandad but my mother lost her father. grief is funny because i haven’t called my mother. how do i console her ? what do i say? how do i muster ‘it will be okay” would it? how do i explain that it gets better? she is my mother but today i must become her father.

and because i know she will read this.

mummy i’m sorry. i love you with all my heart. i do not know if it gets better but i know how much easier it will get because of all of us. your daddy will be so proud of you 💘

my odogwu abey. you lived, you loved, you became. thank you for being. i’m sorry i still can’t say rest in peace. i just can’t. i love you my favorite guy from your favorite lawyer ♥️

but before i leave, how is your day going joor?