#Notes on Grief

[quotespile]

For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstretched for things that are no longer there.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

[weltonboys]

notes on grief - chimamanda ngozi adichie

[litsnaps]

[wedarkacademia]

“I finally understand why people get tattoos of those they have lost. The need to proclaim not merely the loss but the love, the continuity. I am my father’s daughter. It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not; grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present.” ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

[classicbooks101]

Does love bring, even if unconsciously, the delusional arrogance of expecting never to be touched by grief?

Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[yourgoldennotebook]

He couldn't ask her how she felt, because nothing she said would be enough. He wanted to scream at his parents, to hit them, to elicit from them something—some melting into grief, some loss of composure, some recognition that something large had happened, that in [his brother's] death they had lost something vital and necessary to their lives. He didn't care if they really felt that way or not: he just needed them to say it, he needed to feel that something lay beneath their imperturbable calm, that somewhere within them ran a thin stream of quick, cool water, teeming with delicate lives, minnows and grasses and tiny white flowers, all tender and easily wounded and so vulnerable you couldn't see them without aching for them.

— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

[noemyreads]

notes on grief - chimamanda ngozi adichie

“I feel inexperienced and immature in the face of this hell that is sadness. how can he be joking and talking in the morning, and in the evening be gone forever?”

synopsis

written after the death of chimamanda ngozi adichie's father in june 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic that kept the adichie family apart, notes on grief is a powerful account of the immeasurable pain of loss and the memories and resilience it brought s for her. aware of being one of millions of people suffering at that moment, the author focuses not only on the family and cultural dimensions of grief, but also on the loneliness and anger inherent to it.

my opinion

my experience with grief is minimal, but with the author, I could feel it through her words. she wrote about thoughts and feelings that are somehow universal. I highlight two points that the author talked about that I could feel the pain:

look for the person and for a moment forget what happened

“okey sends me a video of a very old woman walking through the front door of our house, in tears, and I think: I need to ask dad who it is. in that small instant, what was true for the forty-two years of my life remains true: my father is tangible, he breathes in and out, I can look for him, talk to him, see the sparkle in his eyes behind the lens of the glasses. then I feel a terrible nausea and I remember again. this momentary oblivion feels both a betrayal and a blessing. do I forget why I'm not there? I think so. my brother and sister are there, face to face with the desolation of a home without my father.”

I can't imagine the painful feeling of looking for someone who has been with you all your life and not finding them, simply because they are gone. this is one of the situations that grieving people people experience the most, they want to share something with that person and they cannot.

the life that follows

“how is it possible for the world to go on, to breathe in and out identically, while inside my soul everything has permanently disintegrated?”

this thought is something that always comes to my mind in the face of death, how does life go on as normal as it can be for other people while yours is falling apart?

her words on grief already hurts, bu it hurts even more to see it from the perspective of the pandemic, how desperate it was to be away from your loved ones and not be able to say goodbye. I can't even imagine the feeling for the author, being in another country, at the beginning of a pandemic.

the author was able to describe grief in a way that I, who have not gone through anything of this intensity, can feel her pain, her anger, sadness and, above all, her love for her father.

title: notes on grief

author: chimamanda ngozi adichie

rate: 4

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Currently reading

[theellipelli]

arent you gonna wake up sometime soon ?

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Birds of a Feather previous / next

[quotespile]

How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

[candlebel]

I can't cry... I want to cry... I feel so much sorrow...

[litsnaps]

[wedarkacademia]

“We don't know how we will grieve until we grieve.”

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

[classicbooks101]

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

Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie