Mantalk: Most men don't grieve. They suffer

Lately, it seems death has been stalking me. Over the past couple of weeks, several known people to me have given up the ghost. As you read this, I am burying my grandfather. Don’t ask me how I feel. I don’t know. I’m out there. Somewhat down, and I have the circus-has-left-town feeling when you finally realise that eventually no one makes it out alive. 

I’d readily take a shot of something strong, preferably not coffee, preferably not hot, and someone’s daughter’s hands and heart for me to rest my sadness in. Lo, and behold, while my sisters get hugs and forehead kisses, I am served with a generous amount of taking it on the chin. I don’t think I have a strong enough chin. Heck, I don’t even have beards to cushion the hit.

Death holds up a mirror to everything in life—love, loss, and everything in between; memories that sap and memories that exalt. My only regret is that I couldn’t mine enough of the wisdom and beauty from the memories of my grandfather in the sunset of his life, like a Zoom meeting nobody remembered to record. These are the base currencies of memory, the raw materials of my grief, the things that stick in the mind long after the connecting tissue turns to dust. The way he laughed, his refusal to wear spectacles yet he can’t see, his poor grandad jokes (which thankfully were not in his will and thus not part of my inheritance); you don’t appreciate the clouds when you’re lost in the fog, and then suddenly it lifts and all you can do is look back wistfully, time gilding the memories. It’s a vicious cycle: pain begets rage, rage begets supplication, supplications now begetting self-flagellation. Grief, as you can see, is the manure from which insanity germinates.

Like a sane man descending into madness, I was agonising over how to gently reject going to his funeral. Look, I am terrible with death. My mother called me and said—no, insisted—that it’s time for me to step up. Lead the way. Firstborn things. So, when things happen, I have a say. Have I really washed my hands to dine with the elders? She sounded sad, I sounded distant. What does a son say in this moment? I love you? It will be OK? But it wouldn’t be OK.

I don’t even know how to handle my own grief, let alone my other family members. I have cried thrice in my life, once when I was being born (duh) and that other time when my grandmother died, in 2005, but to be fair and/or completely honest, she made fire pancakes and I may have been mourning the pancakes a little bit more. (It’s okay, you can smirk. She knew about it). 

The other time I cried is when I had nail surgery on my right foot’s big toe. I am not sure if you have had nail surgery but boy. It’s like going to a club and hitting on a mama and taking her home only to find that s/he is a man. You get my point. 

My father isn’t any better. Come to think of it, most of the men in my life have been rocks. Stalwarts. I don’t have any memories of dealing with grief with any of them, except that time in 2005 when my grandmother died and I saw baba cry for the first time. He was inconsolable, that was his mother and he was the favourite son (that’s what he tells us)—which explains why I was the favourite grandson. I may be bending the truth but I am not lying. Other than that, we are all emotionally incompetent. How I deal with grief? I don’t. 

Grief knows nothing of propriety, and neither does death, and it doesn’t care that I have deadlines (probably poor choice of words here) to hit, or work to work. It doesn’t end, but it changes. But I want to comport myself well by lingering in the memories, like an ex after an amicable parting, I want to believe my grandpa had run his race, and I wish him well on the other side, albeit with a sense of wistfulness at what might have been. That’s the thing about grief. You may burn with rage one minute and drown in love the next. You may be smothered with the mementos; you may go bananas from the memories. It’s generally like dating, and particularly like dating in Nairobi. 

Is there a sliver of silver lining underneath this cloud? Well, I guess. The reality is I have spent some time with family. Funny, eh? How death seems to take and give at the same time? I met most of my cousins, and I am happy to report I have not dated any of them. In this town, being a cuzo has the same weight as being an emergency booty call. That’s the other real tragedy of our time, us who were raised in the city, and have no roots to cling to, no identity to speak of, and nowhere to call home. You grow up knowing so and so is an auntie from sijui where, or an uncle from the States, but ‘ulikuwa mdogo sana’; so the only thing they can tell you is: “You know nilikupanguza makamasi.” Death takes, death gives. 

What does death smell like? Like a dark tangy odour, metallic and sharp, like licking the end of a spent battery. You cannot read loss, only feel it. It’s only by keeping death nearby that one can truly live. Grandpa lived. I think he was just bored of living, having to wear spectacles, those darned spectacles. He copped out early. Which is like him to keep time. (It’s okay guys you can laugh. It’s what grandpa would want. And would you deny a dying man his final wish? (One of his wishes was also to see his grandchildren but hey, how could he? When he refuses to wear spectacles. Too soon?))

It’s funny now, but I know grief is also a river and you cross it alone. We, men, just don’t know how to say we are hurting. Sigmund Frede, the great psychiatrist once opined that whatever you suppress will find its way back to you. Memories then are all we have. I think I sat with my grandma’s death for so long, shoving it under the hand-me-down carpet from my father that when it all simmered, I went off and everything came crashing down. I am not sure what I was crying for, or about: the loss of my relationship with her? Her death? Pancakes? Or all that pent-up anger and guilt from having never learned how to express my emotions? This time, it will be different. The plan is to sink into the water, and swim, and keep swimming. 

As my uncles and extended family looked for the nearest bar, I understood. They were grieving; and how a man expresses his grief, loss, and pain is a man’s business. To be your own man today is to acknowledge the pain, but not to dwell in it. And then it started raining, in a case of ironic iconoclasm, but it was a relief in the same way old people enjoy having a child in the room, because it gives them something to fuss over when they have nothing left to say to each other.

The shovels dug the dirt and lain it on the casket, and I could only think about Emily Fragos’ poems, ‘The Sadness of Clothes’, and what they feel when their owner dies:

“When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived

their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.

Do with us what you will,

they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.

He is gone and no one can tell us where.”

Go well old man. Save me some pancakes. Better yet, don’t touch any. 

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