Eight and still alone

A letter about losing my grandfather

I wrote this letter in January 2025.

It was my first attempt at grief, stirred while reading Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming.

My grandfather raised me. He was the first parent through the gates when the closing bell rang at elementary school, sheltered me under his shoulders, motivated me to pursue mathematics.

I lost him when I was eight.

I turn twenty-two in a few minutes.

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June,

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down the hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful – a purple sunset of a playground full of kinds – and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.”

– Michelle Obama in Becoming

I was eight when my Baba left for good.

A few days earlier, he had called my crude red and black Nokia phone urging me to be kind, to take care of my mother, and to do everything earnestly. Baba rarely called without specific cause, but here he was handing me a set of charges. I remember skipping about the house while receiving this call: I couldn’t stay still. ‘Why was he being so serious?’ I must’ve thought, ‘We’ll see each other in a few days.’ Baba drove 45 minutes every school day to pick me up. Every weekend, after I moved out his place, my mother repaid the favor and drove me down to commune with him and Iya.

That beloved Sunday was like any other one. The house was empty, for now. Iya was about to return from her church meeting. Baba was on the road, on his way back from a friend’s burial in a different state. I don’t know where my mother was. I was alone with my aunt. If my calculations are correct, she must’ve only been a few years older than I am today.

It was hot. The kind of hot that meant opening all the louvres and curtains for any sliver of wind. My aunt was fast asleep on the floor, her head cushioned with one throw pillow. I might’ve been playing a game on her BlackBerry – snakes – when a call came in. Startled, I struggled to pause my progress before handing the phone back. The number wasn’t saved. I communicated that. Without moving an inch from her resting circle, aunt collected the device and listened. Her body seemed to freeze. ‘I’m coming,’ she replied. Aunt was up. She grabbed a few items, said she was coming back soon, and ordered me not to open the door for anyone. She eventually changed her mind, locking me in and taking the key with her.

I had small guesses about what went wrong. One hour. Two hours. Three hours went by. A handful of my grandparents similarly aged friends started to flock in the veranda. They settled solemnly, posed a few questions to me through the window, and carried the pitiful, oh poor boy, look I now despise seeing or reading. My small guesses began to crystallize into intrusive thoughts. Something was wrong, and I wasn’t excited to find out what.

I was still eight and still alone in the house.

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Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash