I WISH WE WERE MEETING UNDER BETTER CIRCUMSTANCES

I made my way through the throng of familiar faces and out of the sanctuary. I met her just outside the steps and almost mechanically leaned in to hug her.

“How’re you doing?” She asked after we parted.

“I’m good. How are you?” This had been my custom response to various forms of that question all day.

But then she paused for a second, looked me in the eye and asked again, more firmly this time, “How are you really doing, Cher?”

In that moment, perhaps for the first time that day, I stopped in my tracks and thought about the implications of that question, and what answering it honestly might entail. It was like she had made herself into a safe space for me, someone in the sea of familiar faces who might understand.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve allowed myself to feel, so I don’t know,” I responded, almost shocking myself at how honest I had been with her, a virtual stranger. “How are you holding up?” I asked, redirecting.

As expected, her reaction was less alien than mine, “I’m shocked, sad… I saw him the morning of the accident, told him to be careful, obviously he wasn’t listening to me, nobody ever does.” I laughed at that last bit.

We had a brief exchange, not very memorable, before we parted ways, because as I was learning, that’s what you do at a friend’s funeral. There is no easy way to bury a friend, really.

You get the news that he is missing on a Tuesday and it’s very surreal. Almost a hoax, you hope. You and all his other friends get to work trying to find him, even though there is only so much you can do. You all start a hash tag on social media and post his picture in Whats-app groups you’ve never been active in. You hope and pray that this nightmare goes away. That night, you’re supposed to be studying for your end of semester exams but your mind refuses to cooperate, you can’t even sleep. So you sit up in your bed and stare at the wall until the light of dawn starts to filter in through your curtains.

On Wednesday evening, you’re on a bus when you get the news, not that he was found, but that his body was. It’s almost like he’s not allowed to not be alive anymore, because he was here last week, cracking jokes, asking though provoking existential questions at a village meeting. Tears keep filling your eyes but you choke them back, determined not to fall apart on that bus. Memories of him go through your mind as the bizarreness of all this finds home in your thoughts. You compose poems about parties, birthdays, graduations… and now a funeral. And God, why? You fidget till your whole body shakes and you have to make yourself stop. You try to compose a post thanking everyone who responded to your posts the previous day, but all the words you try to use don’t make any sense. So the only thing you do that first day is delete the pictures on your status, but then you immediately wonder if it’s too soon. This way, guilt is added to the bulk of emotions you will try to suppress in that season, in an effort to compartmentalize.

You sit through class and every time someone asks how you are, you almost burst, yet you are able to keep it together that night. The thing about people asking how you are, most times, is that they rarely ever really want to know, it’s just this courteous thing we all do. The ride back home is also something else, but by now, you’re getting the hang of this ‘keeping it together’ gig. You think about it, you don’t process, put other people’s emotions before your own.

At some point, you get added to a whats-app group and you finally find a way around the 'telling people' thing. The condolence messages flow in like a river, but you don’t open any of them. The next couple of days, you spend finding yourself in a community of people and you all help each other navigate the weight of this thing. A part of you understands that this isn’t one of those things you can get through by yourself, you are grateful for that part.

The memorial service is beautiful, you help with setting up the photos, you sit next to the guy doing projections and take pictures of the speakers for the family who could not make it there. It’s amazing to have a front row seat to watch the magic of all these people who were impacted by him, coming together to celebrate his life. There is pain, grief, sadness, you feel cheated and robbed but are all able to find space in your hearts for gratitude, for joy, laughter in remembrance of the times shared… Afterwards you encounter the girl on the steps.

February took someone away from me. I did not allow myself to process it for a long time because first, I had a shitty semester to get through; then second, I needed to be there for everyone else. The third thing that I’ve barely even admitted to myself was that, and pardon me if I struggle to find the words for it, it didn’t feel like I had the right to grieve him.

There were so many more people who had been with him, done life with him, experienced things alongside him. I only came and went, was there then I wasn’t, it was kind of turning into my M.O lately. Owing to this, it shouldn’t have hit me as hard. I feel silly even writing that because it sounds like total crap, like it shouldn’t matter, I should stop being so hard on myself and just grieve. Yet that was the space I was finding myself in at that moment.

And then amidst the chaos in the depths of my mind, a wise man found me in his sermon and pulled me out from under the current. He told me (us) that the best thing I could do was not to act like it didn’t hurt, because that would imply that the moments we had together, however brief, did not matter. Nothing could be further from the truth, because they did matter, so very much. So, little by little, I was able to let myself fall apart, hopefully, some healing lies therein.

To dispel the notion of a ‘happy ever after’, I’ll confess that I still struggle with sleep and I’ve picked up my fair share of coping mechanisms from that. All in all, bumpy or smooth, a way was made.


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p.s. If you're reading this, you just finished reading my first ever post on this here blog. I'm very excited and grateful that you made it this far, this is hopefully, the start of something beautiful!



p.p.s: shout out to the mad genius who helped (by help, i mean he built it from scratch and i made his life a living hell while he was at it) me build this blog, Shawn, he is the best software developer I have ever met, and this platform would never, ever exist without him.

p.p.p.s shout out to one Crystal Nashipae, who will be co-authoring this blog with me, albeit she doesn't know it yet. She is the most gifted writer i have ever met and a truly exceptional human being as well.