23/06/2024
Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli
“People think because you have cried in their presence, they have witnessed real grief. They are content to sit across from you, hand you Kleenex and cluck sympathetically while you dab at the tears and lower your eyes in meek appreciation of their company. They make you food and phone you once, maybe twice, and consider their jobs done, their sympathy meters drained. They would much rather you walk with your head held high, shoulders back, a silent decree that Yes, I am mourning, but feast your eyes on the dignity I maintain. People are not prepared or simply don’t want to see the reality of it: the jutting cheekbones and bloodshot eyes— the result of night after night spent crying until your corneas burn. People don’t want to witness your slight, wretched figure hunched over the toilet retching bile and saliva when what little food you managed to ingest has run out. They don’t want to see plates being hurled at the wall and sometime later find an incoherent, inert figure lying among the debris. Better to make tea and pat knees and act like this is a nasty case of flu rather than an all-encompassing torture that refuses to fade. Grief is not neat. Pain is not dignified. Both are ugly, visceral things. They rip holes through you and burst forth when they see fit. They are constant, controlling companions, and if they don’t destroy you or your relationships with others, they certainly go a long way to damaging you, disfiguring you internally and altering your existence so much so that when you are lucid enough to look at yourself, at your life, you are astounded (and often disgusted) by what you find staring back at you”.
One thing that I’ve been learning is how differently we experience grief. Our proximity to the deceased is the major contributing factor to the level of grief we experience. But it saddens me when people who are all close to the deceased start comparing who is grieving more, who is suffering more, who needs more care, who deserves what and who contributed to their loved one’s death (pure evil).
Have you read this book?
