Going Through Grief and Losing It All

At no other time does Jesus’ words in John 12:24 make more sense than when you’re held down by the sudden reality of losing someone dear to you.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”

When I lost my dear and only biological aunt in January 2022, I never imagined how much the process of grieving her departure would touch everything around me—from my faith to my career to my health and my sense of being and responsibility.

Everything changed within a few months and is still changing.

I’m the kind of person who cries for strangers. I hate to admit it but my tear glands were generously blessed from above. Yet, the depth of pain this season brought me was nothing I ever bargained for. Even after two years, it’s still hard to not tear up every now and then when my mind wanders back, especially during the Christmas season.

Far from the usual question: God why? My faith has never wavered because I know death is not the end for those who die in Christ. I cry because I’m human and this separation kind of really hurts.

My aunt passed away in the early hours of January 14, 2022. It was a Friday morning and I remember waking up to use the restroom around 5 am when I heard voices in the other room where my mum and sister cousins were.

Before I reached them, I already knew what happened and as if possessed by a force, I acted like everything was normal. I kept telling everyone my aunt has gone home to rest and was now getting a grand welcome from Jesus whom she lived fully for.

I remember sitting by my window, watching the leafy mango tree in the next compound sway to the wind and all I kept saying within me was that my Angie had gone home to rest.

Even when the reality started to hit every other person in the house, I was untouched by it all. I felt nothing. I just kept staring away into the inner recess of my mind turning over moments and memories in my head and imagining a thousand choirs welcoming her home like a triumphant saint that she was.

In another article, I will give a full account of how this tiring journey progressed to the point where I ended up hurting my health. One of the things that went for the pain was my creative drive (for lack of a better phrase).

I remember how much I struggled to return to writing, especially in the first year. It was just impossible. For a full year, I wrote nothing and felt nothing.

I’ve felt so numb, so detached in these last few years than ever in my life. So numb it was hard to get through some days. So numb it was easier to do nothing with the pain swelling inside me that soon made me start avoiding public places. So numb I started avoiding conversations with people.

I tried to write many times until it felt like I could do it. I’d write and delete, write and delete until I become frustrated and sleep off.

As I began to make the effort, I noticed that I couldn’t find myself in what I wrote and questioned why I even wrote in the first place.

Yet, against that voice, I’ve kept at it, and even though the manuscript I’ve been on is in a messy state, penning down over 60k words has been a breath of fresh Enugu air.

My creative spirit was not the only aspect of my life that took the blow. Slowly, as I contemplated the meaning of life and death and our human pursuit, I began to question my own motivation and the caricature of the person I’ve become in the last ten years.

I searched for patterns and even now, I’m in that mental state where I’m constantly questioning my motives in everything.

It’s been a stressful journey tbh. First, I fell under the illusion that I wanted a more stable source of income to become a full and responsible adult to support my mom as every good and grateful child should.

Because of this, when an opportunity showed up, I took a 9-to-5 job as an editor and said goodbye to freelancing after over five years. My 9-to-5 experience was bittersweet. My job challenged and molded me in many ways and showed me how things work.

However, after many inner struggles, I knew I had to leave it behind for two reasons.

One, I had accepted it to supplement my income but it had become the only source as I was often too stressed to get into other things and I was also trying to wean myself off shiny objects syndrome.

Two, I had taken this job for the money and was now bored to death. I wasn’t bored by the act of working itself, instead, I was tired of being an editor.

Realizing I do editing for the money felt too shallow and wicked to the organization I worked with, so I decided to quit and redirect my interest to something I’ve always been fascinated by: storytelling and marketing.

I bet the Holy Spirit had a hard time convincing me to step out into something different because I kept postponing my resignation until I finally pulled the string even though I wasn’t exactly sure of my next steps.

Can I confess to you? I’m still scared to my guts but I’m here now, new seeds planted, hoping for growth and harvest that fills my heart with a sense of relevance.

Quitting that job is the hardest decision I’ve made as a 30-year-old. I knew if I didn’t, I’d be a coward and end up wasting another year working on stuff that didn’t fill me with joy and fulfillment. When I finally pulled it off, I said to myself, ‘Welcome to a new life. Uwa oma abiala.’

The thing no one told me about grieving is that you need to watch out so you don’t become consumed by it because that’s what nearly happened to me and my health took the biggest hit for it.

From heart palpitations to extreme anxiety to dull consistent stomach pain, nagging headache, grief-induced eyebags, pale eyes, lack of enthusiasm about things that used to excite me, to withdrawing from people and public places to twitching skin, skin tags, nerve pains…. I had it all.

In the last two years, I’ve seen a different version of my body and mind, and can tell you for free, it was terrible—I almost lost myself.

Perhaps, the biggest payoff from this bittersweet experience is how it has deepened my faith, cleansed my career cobwebs, and redirected my sense of focus and commitment to what is worth living for.

Let me start with my faith. Before my aunt’s departure, I had started praying for a deeper walk with God but it was a struggle because of the distractions and fancy objects that consumed my mind.

Don’t tell anyone this, but see, if you’re a Nigerian living in these uncertain times, you need to check in with your spiritual compass to weigh your mammon versus God scale.

I tell you, we’re in a generation where we’re confused in the pursuit of a better life that we’ve become trapped in wanting more, more and more.

Should I say my moment of solitude became a blessing in disguise, because for once, I saw myself for what I’d become and the saddest truth from that was realizing how stagnated I was, running in circles when I thought I was making progress.

Going deeper in faith, in 2023, I made moves and journaled my YouVersion devotional experience for 365 days. My notes sit in a Google Sheet that reminds me of a year I did something I never thought through but was consistent enough to see to the end.

As my study life became more flowy, prayer became a lot more desiring even though it’s still one of my biggest struggles as a Christian.

While I embraced my new faith ideology and the reality of my motivations, I became more weary of the endless diversions that came with it. I started rethinking my decisions and desires. Now, I can say every day has become a conscious effort to choose less and enjoy the little as though it is all that can fill me.

Why extend yourself all over the place without anything to show for it? That was the question I kept asking myself for the most part of 2024 while seeking God’s heart and direction for my next steps.

This new practice of choosing less is harder than it seems, especially for a multi-talented person like me who constantly needs to keep her mind in check. I even began to believe I had ADHD or something because of the frequency at which I shifted from ideas to ideas, even a chameleon would be stunned.

Clearing my career cobwebs was another hard take I struggled with. Imagine having your mind constantly intruded on with one new idea nearly every day.

Sometimes you pause to scream…can you all just stop…and for a few days everything settles and you feel sane and focused again.

Then a few days later, a voice pipes in your head, “What if we start a business that lets people buy tickets to visit the moon to watch stars sing.”

Okay, that was a joke but you get the picture. I’m that kind of person and it was nearly impossible for me to not want to explore many things.

My other name should have probably been Ideas Chameleon because I’ve started a thousand and more businesses in my mind, put some on paper but upon caring knocks from the Holy Spirit, my brain resets for a few days.

I really had to work on this part of me behind the scenes and it is the actual reason I went totally offline because I was tired of starting and stopping midway through something new. A flash-in-the-pan identity is a bad reputation to wear like a badge.

Do I have less noise in my head? Not really but I’ve become more self-aware and committed to putting the better and updated version of myself out as real improvements happen within. This has spun into a new self-check system that is helping me stay on course.

Oh, the experience doesn’t stop there. There were good ones too.

One of the best things that happened to me while grieving was reading memoirs and stories of dead people of faith whom I call good spirit friends. Nothing spooky and I promise I’m not weird. 

My aunt passed away the same month as Jane Kristen Marczewski—Nightbirde, the singer and storyteller. I had been following Nightbirde’s journey with cancer on her Instagram page and witnessed her faith first-hand—a super solid one.

Because of my aunt’s death, I didn’t check up on her for a while and the day I returned to her page, I found out she’d also passed away just a month and five days after my aunt.

I was heartbroken first by Jane’s death before I eventually succumbed to my aunt’s (which took me two months to finally feel the weight of my loss and acknowledge that she was truly gone.

I grieved so much that Mothering Sunday morning in 2022 that my body was vibrating, and for two days, I ran a high fever and could faintly hear anything. This was when my journey to proper grieving started).

Nightbirde was dear to my heart (remember I cry for strangers…hello empath). She writes so well and her raw stirring journal during this period of her suffering reaches deep into my soul whenever I stumble on them.

God is on the bathroom floor still makes me cry when I think deeply about her faith and unfathomable peace amidst suffering and imminent death:

“I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.”

But Nightbirde was not my only good spirit friend. One day, I asked one of my sister cousins to send me a memoir recommendation and innocently, she pointed me to Paul Kalanithi’s, When Breath Becomes Air.

This book by a gorgeous neurosurgeon making peace with the brevity of his own life revolutionized my view of my role in living, my responsibility to my family, my contribution to society, and my choice in dying.

[And I almost missed sharing how I penned down 55 poems on death thinking I’d publish them but somehow have kept them as I’ve felt unsure sharing something so dark like that with others yet.]

I think I love Paul in death the same way I love Chadwick Boseman and Nightbirde. It’s like discovering someone’s soul and how you just want to sit in their presence and share a moment with them.

Lots of questions I want to ask and words of love to whisper. You really can’t hug dead people but I think they know how much their experiences and attitudes through pain inspire me and the way I want to live. A kindred soul, I call such people.

I’m still a work in progress, thanks to Leanne Crawford and the beautiful voices that carried me through this difficult season. I’ll share my grief playlist someday, I promise.

There’s more dying to do—to us and the things that need to kiss the earth—and since my health struggles have not rendered my breath mere air, there is so much living and good work to do—for God and humanity.

Grieving may well be over but the souvenirs live with me in many guises. Some I’m exploring through journaling and storytelling, some through healing habits, others through daily affirmation and encouragement of others.

Let’s toast to the journey ahead but first, don’t be afraid to die, therein lies the seed for a life well-lived and a garden that stays flourishing: you.

Emesia,

EUO.