DELAYED NOT DENIED: GRIEF EDITION, PT 1

For years after my sister’s passing I didn’t give myself permission to grieve. When she was sick and in the hospital, I immediately started wracking my brain to find the funds, whatever the amount would be, to help her and the rest of our family to pay for the treatments and hospital room and board. I jumped straight into action. Whatever action looked like. Whether it be grocery shopping for the fruits she loved, ensuring her hair was clean and neatly groomed, cooking and packing her lunch so that she would have some ‘decent’ food to eat. She hated the hospital’s bland excuse for food, I mean, who doesn’t? I remember distinctly cooking fish with boiled bananas and sweet potatoes for her because I wanted her to have something healthy and delicious to eat. She loved it. I can remember her now saying with her cheeks full of food, “mhm, Lena, you put you foot in this man”. She loved saying things like that. Like me, she was such an old soul, one who felt, thought and loved deeper than any one else on this earth. My sister always approached life like someone holding a secret. She always seemed to know something that the rest of us was unaware of, and looking back now, it seems that whatever she knew was so deep and inexplicable that she just didn’t bother to try.
Navigating her short period of sickness taught me that I show love through action. I remember the brief time she was released from the hospital. She was in so much discomfort but she wanted her hair to be washed. Afterall, she was such a beautiful and classy lady and she didn’t intend for sickness to erase that. I remember carrying the bucket full of water to the small bedroom she was in at her in-laws place and had her lying down while I stooped to lather and rinse her long, black hair, ridding it of the dirt and smell of the hospital. As sick as she grew each passing day, I never once thought that she would die. I truly believed that this sickness was something that came to pass and I was hell bent on helping her to overcome this ridiculousness. Afterall, she was only 28 years old. She was a new wife, a new mom - having just given birth to her beautiful daughter Catherine only a mere five months before, and she had a thriving small business where she made beautiful, intricate, hand-carved earrings that women locally and internationally couldn’t wait to get their hands on. I mean, with all this going on there was no way God was going to allow her to die, right? Right? Wrong.
After only two short months of learning she was ill, Collette passed away on April 29, 2024. A day I will never forget for as long as I live.
When the hospital called my family that fateful Monday morning, a part of me knew what we were about to hear. Still, I held my breath, held my head high and drove to pick up my mother and sister and head to the hospital. We drove in silence as we all headed there. No one daring to mention what we knew was coming. Once we arrived, the doctors ushered us into a small room and delivered the devastating blow. Collette was gone. She had passed away that morning after being in the ICU for only a few days, under heavy sedation, she never woke up from. There were so many questions, so many emotions, but in that moment as we all huddled around her bed looking at her still, lifeless body, there were only tears. Everyone in the room, me, my mother, my sister, Collette’s husband and his family, all we could do was hold each other and cry. I remember touching her beautiful hair, touching her face, her hand, her fingers. I had never been brave enough to touch a dead body before, but this was no dead body to me. This was my beloved baby sister, the one I had always had for as long as I can remember. The one I had loved and cared for as though she was my daughter and not my sister. And although I stood there crying, for whatever reason, I just did not register her as dead. Yes, the tears were running down my face, but I was crying almost the same way we cry at a movie theatre when a sad scene is playing and the actors are crying. I was reflecting the mood of the room and the people in it. Those were not my real tears but I didn’t know that then.
For a long time, I did not give myself permission to grieve. That same morning I had a final exam at the University to sit. It was my final year and this exam determined whether I would graduate or not. After spending about an hour at the hospital, I wiped my tears, and hugged my family good bye. I had to go and do my exam. If you were sitting next to me in that exam room, you would not have been able to tell what was happening in my life at that current moment. You would not have been able to tell that this woman is just leaving the hospital after being told that her sister and best friend was gone - dead. You would not have been able to tell that only moments ago I was holding onto the lifeless hands of one the closest people in my life. No, from the stoic expression I must have been wearing, no one seemed to notice anything. It was like I was watching myself from a distance do the things I was doing. Some greater force must have been carrying me because I do not know how I did any of those things in my own strength. And I sat that exam that day, telling myself that Collette would have wanted me to pass and to do well, so that is exactly what I would do. And I numbed myself long enough to finish that paper, shockingly nabbing a passing grade.
After that it was time to plan a funeral. I did that, bravely. No tears, no theatrics, not needing anything from anyone - j by oust doing what needed to be done. I did not even realize that I hadn’t cried until I was standing next to some old friends from Primary school at Collette’s Candle light vigil when one of them said to me, “how comes you are not crying and I am here bawling my eyes out?” After I looked at her unamused and unresponsive, she followed up by saying, “I’m going to stand next to -” and she called the name of a cousin of mine who had gone to school with us - “…so she and I can cry together”, she finished off. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized there were whispers about me by some of the people there, about the fact that I was not crying. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, but it turns out there is socially-acceptable way to grieve - or so some may think. A few weeks later, came Collette’s funeral. I wrote a few words that I went up and delivered - again no tears. I didn’t think anything of it to be honest. I just knew that we had the funeral to plan, children to take care of, clothes to buy and a myriad of things to do and sitting around crying wouldn’t get any of those things done. The funeral came. People who I had not seen in what felt like ages came to say their condolences. There were tears from people who had known Collette for only a short time, but whom she had impacted greatly. She was like that you know. Forceful, charming, witty, unforgettable, and she left an indelible mark on almost everyone she met But me? The one who spent almost every single day of her life with her? Nothing, nada. My mother didn’t cry at the funeral either. We are alike in that way - strong when we need to be, showing no weakness - in public at least.
After the funeral, I went back to work, went back to life. I performed my duties, took care of my family, hit the gym almost everyday of the week and tried to return to some degree of normalcy. Then one day, grief came knocking.
To be continued…