A Year of Growing through Grief: Family
This is the first time that this many cousins (9 out of 15!) came together in the same place. Thanksgiving 2019.
7 minute read
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving marked one year since my father passed away. Or, rather, marks a year since the day I was commuting to the office and received a 3rd degree telephone message from my estranged paternal uncle via my maternal uncle that my father had, most likely, passed away. What followed in that next year was an uprooting of old assumptions, planting of new knowledge, and coming to understand what parts of my family tree I could - and couldn’t - build a house around.
You see, my father passed away in November 2018, 5,518 mi on the other side of the Atlantic. The last time I saw him face to face was twenty years before, only furthering my distance from his death. He was always a specter in my life given my mom’s Nigerian traditionalist efforts to “honor our father”...and her never-ending hope that he would come back someday. I was planning to visit him that next February. I wanted to try and rekindle the embers of a relationship that I chose to let die at a time when I did not have the strength to support my single mother, my younger siblings, and get myself ahead in a country that was native only to the children I was supporting. This meant I did not have a personal connection with any blood relations on his side. Had I not heard about his death through my maternal uncle, I would not have heard at all.
Throughout this past year, there were quite a few realities that hit me squarely in the face. As reality-altering as a physical knock to the noggin can be, it is even more so when it comes to the loss of someone who was a significant part of your life story. The lessons from this past year that stand out the most for me are:
The things you learn about the person after their death are truths worth embracing.
There were a lot of stories about my father that were half-baked or devoid of certain truths - truths that came tumbling out as we all tried to unpack the realities of his death. Some of them were enlightening, and others were just as mind-bending as the fact that he’d suddenly passed away. I chose to use them as anchoring pieces of information to help me find some closure. This allowed me to feel like I was getting to know this human being a little better, and helped me reason that the news wouldn’t feel catastrophic forever.
For those whose significants were estranged, the truth of who you were (and are) without them is still valid...maybe now more than ever.
I mentioned earlier that my mother always held hope that Dad would return, a hope that she then weaved into many parts of our lives. Though I felt fatherless, she wouldn’t allow me to say I was given “your father is doing business in Nigeria”. She was proactive about calling him to speak to us, though the effort was often one-sided. She always bought him something for his birthday, took family photos for us to send, and told us to set aside gifts at Christmas because “we should include your father, too”. Kids are pretty wise, so we were the first to call out how strange this felt, and the ones to eventually stop her efforts. “He isn’t here. He was never here, and he isn’t coming back”, we told her. Because she refused to drop her hope, in a small way I think I did too. The news of his death cemented the truth that I am a first-generation Nigerian-American child from a single-mother household. It helped me lock a part of my identity that, though I’d built a ton of personal narrative around, had been built on shifting ground. That truth is no longer shifting, and I feel clearer and stronger for it.
What people demand of you during this time will say a lot about the role they play in your life. Pay attention.
I have a different understanding of relationships since my father passed. I never expected the ways people would show up for me during this time. I started this post with a picture of my family (maternal) because of how they rallied around me with my father’s passing. They helped me get to Nigeria. They made sure I was safe. They sent food, money, and made time to see me and ensure I was okay. They showed up for my siblings in ways that none of us would have expected. This was not the pattern of behavior I’d lived through, so seeing their acts of uncompromising love floored me. In the same vein, my friends and coworkers truly leaned into the role of “family you get to choose”. They knew I was at my lowest and made sure, as soon as they heard the news, to be there for me. Their visits were a check-in on my mental health, performed through the roles of comforter, comedian, and unhealthy-snack enabler. They let me cry in their arms and brought Haagen-Dazs on request! I love plants so my job sent gorgeous bouquets of flowers to me and my mother so that my apartment smelled like a garden. My friends gave me language through which I could talk about my pain. I can ask for support from them anytime, anywhere; another positive disruption of how strong I once understood my relationships to be. I’ll write more about how my job supported me this year in a future post.
I kept these flowers from my company alive for over a month. They brought me so much joy.
As there are people who lean into the gaps of your grief, unfortunately, there are those who don’t show up as you expect, as you need, or just don’t show up at all. I had a few folks who guilted me for not having the energy to go out or invest in their new startup idea. I had folks who reached out because they wanted my help, and when I expressed I was in bereavement, they ghosted. I had a few folks who wanted me to share my grief with them, and when I didn’t have the energy or didn’t feel comfortable, they became angry with me. I know now that those responses were more about the person than they were about me, but I noted those responses as key insights into who these people are and where they stand on our relationship. All but one of them are still in my life to some degree, but my relationships with all of them have shifted by necessity.
It’s worth noting that there are plenty of folks in my life who didn’t have the opportunity, for many reasons, to interact with me during this time. While I believe this says something about my connection to them, I think it’s worth calling this nuance out so you (the reader) and I remember to apply judgement with a grain of salt.
It is okay to grieve over a strained relationship. It is okay to grieve the potential you’ve lost, the answers you’ll never get, the closure you weren’t able to find.
It bothered me when I realized I wasn’t just moving on from my dad’s death. I told myself that he wasn’t there so his importance was inconsequential, why was I so hurt? As I started doing a bit of research, I came across a few different posts that really helped frame this dual-grief. In this Huffington Post article, Dan Wolfson, clinical director of Experience Camps for Grieving Children, said:
“There are really two separate losses, there’s the finality of there no longer being any room for repairing a relationship the person may wish could have been different. That is very different from grieving the loss of the person themselves.”
Grieving over what will never be is just as valid as grieving over what was, especially if the thing that will never be is your parental relationship, or your personal closure. That being said, I have found it is incredibly important work to build your own closure. I’m building mine around the understanding that my personal story is what I’ve lived, not the fantasy I chased my whole life. My strength from that story is mine, forged by what I’ve experienced. Who I am as a person was informed by his absence, and I like this person a hell of a lot. I am who I am both because of his contribution, AND his lack. My people are who they are because of the need to fill the gaps he created. I couldn’t ask for a better parting gift than those truths.
Grief is a never-ending process that evolves with time, place, and personal experience. I’m sure there will be more to learn...but the lessons in this first year have pointed me to the parts of my family tree, and myself, that are strong and vibrant. These lessons have turned a negative experience into one of beauty and positivity. I hope they do the same for you.
Parting Sounds: Ama Be Happy - ArchDuke
If you’ve lost a loved one, what life lessons have resonated for you?