Maame(70)

I turn my head and notice he looks … the same, except maybe his lips have thinned a little. He could be sleeping. I stare until I realize I’m waiting for his eyes to open.

There’s no look of frustration or uncertainty on his face, the expressions I’d grown used to seeing. His forehead is smooth, and his hands, placed on his stomach, are still. He’s not in pain anymore.

He has on his gray wedding suit, a white shirt underneath, and I press a hand to my mouth when I see he also wears his chunky silver bracelet, the bracelet he has on in the photograph I have of him, the bracelet that has been on his wrist through sickness and in health.

Mum speaks to him in Twi. “May God bless you, Fiifi. Go with Him, okay? Go with God; see your parents again; they’re calling you and waiting for you. Have peace and have rest.” She’s crying harder than I’ve ever seen before. Tears are streaming from her eyes and she punctuates her sentences with hiccups. “You have suffered so much,” she says to him, “trapped, but now you are finally free. See? Look at you already? Your swollen foot is no more. You’re already free. Go with God and be free.”

It’s comforting to hear, not so much the words, but my mother tongue. The language of my parents—they rarely spoke to each other in English.

You really should learn to speak Twi.

Before we leave, I look at his face one last time and say, “I love you, Dad. Very much, okay?”



* * *



An intense peace settles on me when I board the train, almost like I’ll never cry again. I know that isn’t true, but I’m happy to believe it for now.

It was Nia’s idea to do something after so that I didn’t have to go straight home. She knew that before seeing Dad, I wouldn’t be able to stomach breakfast, so she suggested lunch. I said, sure, but so long as it was somewhere I haven’t tried before. Somewhere new.

Nia picked a spot in London Bridge called Casa de Maria. A Portuguese restaurant she went to years ago with an old boyfriend. It’s lowly lit and the tables and chairs are wooden. There are plants in the corners and posters on the wall. Each table has a glass bottle of water and an unlit candle.

We order mushroom and caramelized onion empanadas, green rice, batatas fritas, and half a chicken to share. Nia chooses a beetroot smoothie to drink.

“What? Sounds interesting,” she says. “So does the spinach and orange. Want to get one each and then we can share?”

I order a Diet Coke.

“So, how was it?” Nia asks.

“It was good,” I answer. “Considering the circumstances, and what I mean by that is, no one else died. He looked the same, kind of like he was sleeping. I wanted to reach out and shake his arm, like a kind of ‘Wake up, Dad’ thing.”

“Ah, Maddie.” She rests her hand on top of mine.

“No, it really was good to see him.”

The waitress drops off my Coke. There’s ice in my glass and I swirl the cubes around with my straw.

“I’m glad he looked the same.”

“Didn’t they put makeup on him?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“They did with my dad.”

I leave my straw alone and watch Nia stretch her arms behind her back.

“His lips were blue,” she says, “so they put makeup on him, and to try to hide that his eyes had sunken a bit.” She rests her elbows on the table. “My uncle made me touch him and I was resisting and he was pulling my hand, saying, ‘Go on, you have to touch him! It’s your last chance!’ until I did and my dad was block-hard and cold. After, I was like, yeah, thanks for that, Uncle.”

“This is the first time you’ve really spoken to me about your dad dying.”

“Like I said before,” and she shrugs, “I didn’t want to talk about it.”

I remember when Nia came into school to tell us that her dad had suffered a heart attack in his sleep. She was wearing one of his jumpers—it swamped her, and I just stood there, silent. I almost didn’t believe her. Dying in your sleep sounded too fantastical, something that happens only on TV to sweet old grandmas. I didn’t know what to say or what Nia might need, so I hoped, if anything, she’d just tell me—she was that kind of person. Open. Honest.

That’s what I told myself anyway, but really—

“I pretended it didn’t happen,” I confess. “I thought the less I asked, the less it would be true and you would still be the Nia you were before you lost your dad. I’d never suffered a loss like that before so just assumed you’d rather not talk about it. I thought, why would you want to be reminded? But now I know, you don’t actually forget. I’m sorry I never rode the bus over at night or brought you containers of food or made you go outside.”

“It’s all right, Mads,” Nia says. “And you know what? I liked that when we did talk during that time, it was about different things. I’ve got a big family and they were over all the time, just talking about my dad being dead. I needed those breaks.”

“But I didn’t do that on purpose. I didn’t know it was helping.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “The fact that it did help is what matters.” She pushes her mouth to one side. “We all grieve in different ways, you know?” she adds. “Losing someone is universal, but I think that’s about it, really. The rest is our own thing.”