The Sunday I Lost 2 Dads — Lessons in Grief.
It’s Sunday morning. I just got back from a weekend trip with my partner, who sits in the living room watching tv. I get a call from my brother-in-law who spends the first few seconds on the call having small talk. My suspicion rose but nothing could have prepared me for the next few minutes.
It’s about your dad.
I’ve had heart palpitations from severe panic attacks in the past, but that morning, I learnt a different rhythm to my heart beat.
He had a heart attack and we lost him.
Everything after that beacame lost in transmission (insert tv static sound).
I went from tweeting that I was having the best summer of my adult life , a day before, to receiving several condolence messages the next. I’d spend the next few weeks learning hard lessons about grief and observing how, we, as a society, are terrible at dealing with the emotion.
Last year , I lost 2 dads — The one I had & the one I’d always hoped to have.
I had a very complex relationship with my dad and I’m sure most people who grew up in an African home may share similar sentiments. There were so many things I wish could have been different but our relationship in life looks nothing like the posthumous.
I had always thought of grief has being slightly linear- they die, you mourn and then it gets better (at some point). Imagine my shock when I broke down at a passport office in osogbo, 3 months later, with no familiar face there to console me. I was in tears, missing my dad and ashamed at the same time.
Of all the things that could potentially be felt antithesis, I never imagined grief and shame would be the one I’d experience. I didn’t know you could be so mad at someone and miss their absence so much in the same breath. Sometimes I talk about him flippantly tucked in between sentences and other times, I can’t get through a sentence with the word “dad” without teary eyes. No one told me grief doesn’t honor history, that no matter how complicated your relationship with the deceased was, your response to their demise may look nothing like it (or maybe it does in some way, just as complicated ) For this, I carried shame. I thought it was unacceptable to the “world” to feel this way.
Like unrequited love, where do you take all of these emotions you feel for someone who can no longer hear or respond back to you ? I was mad at my dad for a lot of things but I wanted him present. I wanted him here in my anger. Not dead. I also miss him & the different ways he existed in my world & the ones dear to me. How can I feel all these things in the same exact intensity ? It makes no sense.
For an emotion we will all inevitably experience, Our society has zero understanding of how to manage grief & the people who are feeling it. Everyone says there’s no timeline for grief but what they really mean is, it becomes utterly weird to still be publicly grieving after a year. They don’t tell you this but they say it in the awkward silences, the impatient sighs & the quickness to change the conversation at the sight of grief. But I get it, even I, in the thick of it, am grossly unqualified to manage it.
It’s been over a year and I am only just able to put words to my emotion. Although, my body has communicated this to me in so many different ways; most I can’t even add to this post. No, there’s absolutely no timeline to this shit.
While I continue to uncover the many layers to this, one thing I can hold on to as a lesson is to accept that life is now experienced in “befores”and “afters” The person I was before the news and the one I am becoming after. I continue to pay attention to the ways this has changed me & the choices I make moving forward. Just like every other emotion, I don’t suppress, deny or give it more authority than it deserves; I simply just feel it, every single time it shows up, without shame. They say it doesn’t get better but you learn to live with it
