A Note on Grief

òkú nsukun òkú, aká?olérí nsukun ara w?n?

The dead is weeping for the dead, the mourners are weeping for themselves

-A Yoruba Proverb

Grieving is an interesting phenomenon. As sad as it sounds, everyone needs to experience the liberating feeling tragedy gives -to unpurged our feelings for a while and give a tiny escape to our fears and insecurities. When people cry, they do not necessarily cry because of the things unfolding at that moment, but for everything gone before.?

I am at this funeral service, the only one I have been to in a very long time; I cried so much-almost as much as the bereaved, even though I did not have any memory of the person who died. We have never met or interacted. We probably have been in a public place together once or twice; I probably have seen his retreating figure. But do I cry for him? Hearing all the beautiful things said and left unsaid about him, maybe yes.?But in fact, I cry too, for my own life.

I lost my father before I hardly knew him. My grandmother, who had nursed me for most of my childhood, also died three months after my father's death the same year. I had no idea what happened and why the meaningful people in my life suddenly disappeared. My life started shattering into pieces, and it began my unstable childhood. When my Grandma died, I was placed with another relative in the village, my sister was taken to another place, and my mother was advised to go strengthen her business and come back later to take us. But I never lasted in any of the places I was taken to. I moved so much that by the time I was thirteen, I had already stayed in 7 different homes before I finally settled with my mother in 2004 when I was about to enter secondary school.

There was no space to mourn anything or anyone, both physically and mentally. I only had the luxury of grieving my losses when I became a full-blown adult and have survived the many tensed stages of childhood and young adulthood. I started thinking about everything -how I developed the fear that the best people in my life would leave me. But it is always a scary box to open. It is the dark side of life we like to move away from to the brighter side, tucking our grieves somewhere until…

Until, for instance, we lost a colleague in a very weird way. I cried so inconsolably, but it was way too selfish. Granted, I wept for him, for the son who was doing well. Who, like me, moved away so many miles from the menacing threat of living in a beautiful but chaotic fatherland. Like me, he was a fool -studying Africa in Europe and nursing the dream that he would someday go back home and use his skills and knowledge to shape things. He was probably as lonely with an occasioned Afrobeat night dances with the few friends he called community in a very cold society. Or he survived his nights through calls and slept with a tucked smile on his face, dreaming of when he would see his family again.

It is why I cried. There was no reason I couldn’t have been Richard. It was so close home. Yet I cried for much more. For my own grief that I was denied and the closure I never found to my own sorrow. It feels liberating that the sorrow we carry around in our hearts with no words to describe them and no knowledge to render them can be expressed in someone else’s grief. Death makes a mere mortal of all men, but grief makes a short-lived and much-needed antidote to the pains.

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As support for Richard's family, I am sharing a note written by the BIGSAS cluster including a Gofundme link to support the burial arrangement for his family.

"Our dear colleague Richard Ugochukwu Anyah, doctoral candidate within the Africa Multiple Excellence Cluster, University of Bayreuth, and the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies, BIGSAS, unexpectedly passed away last week at 30 years of age. Like so many friends and colleagues during this time, we are devastated. Just a short week or two ago, we could never have imagined finding ourselves in such a situation. His inquisitive, kind, humorous character will be duly missed. Our thoughts are with the family. That is why we, as a community of friends and colleagues decided to create this very funding group to give burial support to his family"

- BIGSAS Junior Fellows & Early Career and Equal Opportunity Portfolio in the Africa Multiple Cluster?

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