THE PAIN OF LOSS.

The pain of loss is almost indescribable. Have you ever felt so much pain that at some point, you go numb? This numbness isn’t a physical paralysis but a mental and emotional one. Your tear ducts automatically dry up, you open your mouth to speak but you don’t even recognize your own voice, you open your mouth to scream, wail and cry out but no sound comes out. Simultaneously, you’re screaming in your head, lamenting in your spirit, jumping and hitting yourself on the ground severally to jerk back into reality but still, physically, you’re still and numb. Your eyes don’t blink but your pulse keeps accelerating. You feel an inner coldness but physically, you’re running a dangerous temperature that’s growing into a fever. Your mind is blank, you can’t think, your thoughts are a jumble of incoherence and your flesh is weak. At this point, no degree of pain is a degree anymore. Your entire existence has crossed the limit of human pain.

This my dears is what I have experienced as GRIEF. This is SHOCK and in case you’ve never experienced real shock, this is all you’ll go through when you experience one. The pain of loss is real.

As I write this, I feel like I’m communicating better with my keyboard than I’ve ever done with any human since the 12th of October, 2018. Sadly, my life had been a movie since March 2018 I can’t even start explaining. I’m not one to eagerly share my pain but I think I’ve done so slightly on my YouTube channel where I talked about “Living with a Best friend”

and “How I was Duped in Lekki, Lagos”

I didn’t really go into the details of those periods of my life in those videos because I didn’t want anyone’s pity. No; I’m not that weak. The only reason I shared those experiences was because I wanted people; especially young women aspiring to be more, to learn from my mistakes. And so when I got settled and about to start living my best life or should I say normal life, my Dad passed on October 12th, 2018. It was a traumatic experience for me. I went through a brief period of insanity and it didn’t help matters that I was alone in my apartment, packing my little red box for an official trip out of Lagos at the time I got the call.

Why did he die? How? Why now? Why now when I’m just gaining stability to give him the best life he had so longed for? Why now? Oh! The most painful part was, he had called me that same week through my younger brother to speak with me but I had said I was busy at work and would return the call later that evening. You see; I wasn’t actually so busy, I could have given him that attention but I was late on his allowance and I was scared he was gonna ask. What I didn’t know was that, he was already sick and probably knew he was going to die and only wanted to hear my voice for the last time. My brother didn’t even sound like there was anything wrong so I felt all was well. I kept having flashes of reminders that week to call him but I kept procrastinating; telling myself that I’d call him when I had money to send him.

*sigh*

Now I wish I had spoken to him that day or returned that call. That guilt still eats me and even as I type, the pain of my loss is real.

Come January 2019, I threw myself into my work hoping to find closure but the cruel hands of death snatched my eldest brother on the 17th of February. This time, if there was anything called a grade 10 loss of sanity, I experienced the full extent of it. I was at work on Wednesday the 20th and had tried reaching him since Monday for a deal. I wasn’t bothered because I knew he would reach me back when he saw my calls and my message. Tuesday, he hadn’t reached me back but still I wasn’t worried because I knew how busy he could get with his Drum Network Africa business https://www.facebook.com/DrumNetworkAfrica/

On the morning of that horrible day, I thought about it and waved it off as me being unnecessarily sensitive. Then, his church member called me to know if I had heard from him. I told her to give me some time to ask my Mom since he literally called her twice everyday. Mom hadn’t heard from him since Monday when I called her then I started calling my other siblings and nobody was taking my calls. That was when I started feeling that something terrible had happened. I was restless at work. I kept pacing and calling my in law in Abuja didn’t even help. “I’ll call you back” was what I kept hearing. And then, I turned on the data on my phone and I saw a missed audio call on Snapchat from someone I had never made calls with before. He was a drummer just like Solomon, my brother. As if I knew what he was going to say, I chatted him up immediately, he requested for my number, I gave him, he called me and the next words I heard shifted my entire existence. He said;

“Glory I’m so sorry. I heard what happened to Soulman. Please be strong…” but I didn’t hear the rest of it.

I knew at that point that even though I was asking a million questions in my head, I had gone temporarily mad. I had a temporary brain freeze and numbness engulfed me. I remember trying to run out of the office to go search for Solomon. My mind had ran off, my legs were moving, my eyes were running but with hot liquid, my ears had loud sirens wailing non stop from the news, my body was actively trying to transform into a super hero to go save my brother from whatever took him but I was locked in my office with two of my female colleagues holding me down. I’ll never forget that dark day.

When I lost my Dad, I thought I felt pain. I can’t even define what I felt because I could control it. Now I’ve lost a brother, a legend, a great young man full of so much life, dreams, ambitions, passion, impactful in all ways, what I feel is indescribable. I can’t measure my pain. Even when I pinch myself hoping to feel something, I feel nothing. My tears have become internal; they’ve refused to flow freely as they were originally designed to do. I feel like I can’t feel. I keep looking out the streets to see if I’ll see Solomon but nothing is what I see. This loss is deep.

Everything feels like a lie now except this one truth; Coping with the pain of loss is ultimately a deeply personal and singular experience — nobody can help you go through it or possibly understand all the emotions that you’re going through. But you can open up a bit and allow genuine friends to be there for you and help comfort you through the process. The best thing you can do is to allow yourself to feel the grief as it comes over you. Resisting that pain of your loss will only prolong the natural process of healing.

I’ll be writing more about this trying period for me and my family. This isn’t me seeking pity by sharing my pain; this is my own sort of therapy from my emotional instability. If you’ve experienced any level of loss and you feel strong enough to share your story, please go ahead and do so in the comments section below. Let’s help one another heal.

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Recommended Reads:

• Dear Brother: Soulman Eli
• DRUM NETWORK AFRICA: THE EVOLUTION OF MUSIC IN NIGERIA, AFRICA.
• TYPES OF PEOPLE IN A NIGERIAN WORK PLACE