One thing I have learned over the past 3 years is that dead people are just awful. I really do mean that. They absolutely suck. This point cannot be made without giving special emphasis to the recently-departed variety. They live rent-free in your head for weeks and months, jump into your consciousness at the most inconvenient times and make your eyes suddenly become wet when you stumble into something that once made two of you laugh.
The person you used to enjoy this little bit of happiness with is now for some reason exploring the next world without you, and this wasn’t really part of the plan. Both of you never had that conversation because well, why would you? Why would two people who see each other every day and are like comfy pieces of furniture in each other’s lives ever think to plan for what would happen if one of them decided to be an ass and die first? Nobody does that.
2 years on…
Apparently, it has been two birthdays since she passed away, and the weirdest part is that you still measure the passage of time using her birthday, not, you know, the other date. You try to figure out how to deal with life as you realise that everything around you reminds you of her. You can’t watch the show you both worked on anymore because…well it’s obvious why.
You can’t talk about the show online anymore because if you mistakenly try it, some last man is guaranteed to ask you “Ah ahn guy, where is Binta? I’ve not been seeing her videos.” You have to delete all the pictures of her on your phone, and then cancel the delete with a horrified gasp as you realise that these pictures and videos are all you now have left of her.
You have to go to work and act like life is the same. Someone sends you an impatient email asking for an update on that deliverable you’re owing, and you actually type out a response to the effect of “Honestly, why couldn’t it have been you instead of her?” Not that you actually send it of course. Somehow, even in your haze of grief and pain, something still tells you “You need this income dude.”
You have no appetite, but you make yourself eat lunch every day because humans apparently are meant to eat food
So what now?
You try to distract yourself. You find something new to get into on Netflix. You buy a new videogame. You start experimenting with stuff you haven’t eaten before. You get laid more often – anything to take your mind away from the fact that this person is dead, and she has apparently taken every shred of happiness in your soul along with them.
So you keep turning up every day at work or wherever else you’re supposed to be. You keep a smile™ on. You have no appetite, but you make yourself eat lunch every day because humans apparently are meant to eat food. You don’t feel especially human anymore, but apparently it’s important to keep up the appearance for the Non-Bereaved People.
You work. Sleep. Eat. Copulate. Go to the bathroom and cry there. Binge-watch something on Netflix until it shows the “Are you still watching?” message. Sleep. Work. Eat. Cry in toilet cubicle. In a rare moment of despair-fuelled rage, scroll through your phone gallery and delete a few pictures of the dead person who absolutely sucks right now.
Yeah that’ll teach her for dying on you and leaving you here by yourself.
You immediately feel a powerful rush of remorse and rapidly retrieve the deleted media from the recycle bin. You look at her silly face and burst into tears again. A different type of cry this time. Not the despairing, body-shaking cry of a few months ago. This time, it’s a sort of shallow, “You’re just the worst, you know that?” type of cry. Almost a wry cry, if such a thing exists. Because at the end of the day, you love them and you always will. Nobody and nothing will ever change that – not even you.
Whisper it quietly, but you may finally be on the way to starting the healing process.
** On Thursday February 11, 2021, I was named as the winner of the 2020 People Journalism Prize for Africa, alongside Zimbabwean firebrand Hopewell Chin’ono. This is only the second individual honour of my journalism career following my 2019 IVLP nomination, and the first for my work as an investigative journalist. Having celebrated her second posthumous birthday last week, I wish to dedicate the award and this article to my beloved friend, colleague and big sister Binta Bhadmus, who departed from us in November 2019.
