A review by ichthusangel
Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger…You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. 

A short book chronicling a piece amongst the insurmountable grief Chimamanda feels when she loses her father. Grief, irreversible grief (i.e. death) especially, has an ache nothing else can replicate…I know it is not so much about what my father says as it is about being with him. A laugh that I will never laugh again. ‘Never’ has come to stay. ‘Never’ feels so unfairly punitive. For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstretched for things that are no longer there. 

The author reflects on what she has said about grieving until now, what words she said to those who lost someone dear to them. She looks back and finds how flawed her opinions were, how shallow her words must’ve sounded. Grief hadn’t been hers until then, it belonged to other people, she muses, but now that she has felt grief, cried hysterically, she understands the sentiments deeply. 
The book is as much as about grief as it is about love. The first line introduces the readers to the warmth in her family’s bonds despite the distance, despite the unfamiliar void of the pandemic. The more we read we find that while the book is merely a collection of ‘notes’ on grief, it is an ode to her father and how he loved, not just her but all his children, his wife, his homeland, his language, his subjects, his life. Her friends send her lines of her own book, Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved. And while it is true, it pains her to read her own words. She asks if love & happiness become weaknesses that leaves us defenceless in the face of grief. 

The book isn’t black & white— all about grief & love though. There is self reflection, there is disbelief because of death, because of her unconscious mind’s betrayal, there are political issues, customs that aren’t compassionate to the grieving, confusion left in the wake of a global pandemic, a sense of belonging to a language & culture, a child’s wonder and the true nature of grieving.
My favourite thing about the book is how real it is. Often we are told the stages of grief in a way that it seems that one stage passes and others sets in, then another and when all five stages are done, you don’t grieve because time heals everything. The truth is we are humans. We aren’t trees how can sort their years into rings around their trunks. Our emotions & memories are jumbled. The disbelief, hurt, anger, regrets, acceptance, it exists together and keeps on moving. You don’t heal from pain, you learn to accept it, you learn to accommodate in you with all it’s tyranny and pain.

I am writing about my father in past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense.
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