What is the colour of grief?

If you ask me what the colour of grief is, I will tell you it’s a mixture of gloom, heartache and pain. It would look like ominous cloud enclosing you in black darkness. Better still long talons crushing your heart in its grip, leaving you breathless suffocating in a flood of tears.

For those gone before,

For the young snuffed out in their prime

Whose oil lamp grow cold,

Simple words on your epitaph we will write,

Forever in our hearts.

If you finally ask me to choose a colour to aid comprehension. I would say the colour that best describes grief is grey sprayed with a touch of yellow here – memories of the person will pop up from time to time, calling forth the semblance of a smile to make a cameo appearance on your face. And then a hint of gold there – for the sound of their laughter will continue to ring out in your ears long after they are gone.

Nobody ever prepares for grief,

not in the same way you prepare for a wedding or birthday,

for no knows when death will come

but surely it comes.

One thing is sure, the loss is finite and there is no coming back from it. At first it will feel like a dream – more like a ‘this must be playing’ scene. You would wish you can press pause, rewind and cut away the scene where the transposition took place for death is not the end but a change in location.

Nothing, I repeat, nothing prepares you for losing someone so dear, even if you’ve lost someone before and it doesn’t make you get better at grieving. This past 1 month people close to me have lost someone and if I were to count, 4 would be a perfect number but it doesn’t get better. If I who is just a bystander feels the way I feel, I wonder how those at the forefront will feel.

Sometimes the heart sags

With stories untold.

Heavy eyes

Pay tribute to the ones they lost

It’s been years and I still feel Ayobami’s death from time to time. Ayobami was a secondary school classmate who unknown to me I had a crush on. (Don’t ask me how that is possible, even I don’t know. If you sha ask for my secondary school crush, my mind automatically calls up a picture of him smiling with his set of majestically white teeth). Brother was a tall basketball player and I dare say 100% husband material. In his own words “you don’t forget someone you go to the market with”. Ayobami was my market buddy; he was the perfect gentleman, he would carry our market bounty, all I had to do was bargain, pay and the rest was Ayobami’s burden. We would talk and laugh on our way back, taking footpaths that have long disappeared. I guess I feel very pained because we were supposed to meet up after years of not being in contact and next I heard cardiac got his heart arrested and poof my introduction to death began.

They say time heals all things but I don’t think time makes it better as such. It dulls the pain, yes but it’s still there. You can feel it, you can almost touch it but it always elude you when you try. There will be times you will remember the person and smile at the memory, other times a tear will slip through the crack of your eyes and gradually you will shed the pain away.

To all those who grieve, this is for you.