What We Lose

by Zinzi Clemmons

Together, the stories and pictures constitute a vision of death and carnage that is overwhelming, incongruous to the plainspoken beauty of the country. I see no evidence of the horror, which is what makes it terrifying to me.

I never got up the courage to color my hair, but I often let it go curly and wild, refusing to straighten or restrain it from the natural way it fell on my head. I had the nerve to like my hair just the way it was. My mother called me untidy.

Two students went so far as to question me outright, calling me an affirmative action baby. It was always something besides that I was simply better than them. Anything but that I was better than them.

I made myself available to him all the time, and it wasn’t long before he’d used me all up, grown bored, decided he needed more.

How many times have I hungered for loyalty, for the feeling of being needed.

Because my father was a man and relatively young, a part of me was scared that he would leave. That was always the fear with men.

The staff had a phrase for what was happening to my mom—“the dying process”—and they said the words like they should be followed by a ™. Like she was in the process of walking to the store or buying groceries. Just another thing that humans do.

But the condition isn’t mathematical. The loss is what creates the condition. It’s not the fact of one parent, but that the loss has occurred. It’s the wound, not the parts that are left untouched.

A ghost is not a fact in itself; rather, it is a symbol for a need. The most important aspect of the ghost is the need that creates it. The cat-ghost is a symbol of the woman’s grief.

I made the choice to believe in my mother’s spirit. I chose to create a ghost, for the purpose of my own comfort.

Loss is a straightforward equation: 2 − 1 = 1. A person is there, then she is not. But a loss is beyond numbers, as well as sadness, and depression, and guilt, and ecstasy, and hope, and nostalgia—all those emotions that experts tell us come along with death. Minus one person equals all of these, in unpredictable combinations. It is a sunny day that feels completely gray, and laughter in the midst of sadness. It is utter confusion. It makes no sense.

But why do “African” and “contemporary” have to be incommensurate? Why (and to whom) is it appealing to think you are in another city besides the one, in Africa, that you are in?

The truth is that motherhood is stained with blood, tainted with suffering and the potential for tragedy. Why are we surprised when a mother—a real mother, someone who takes care of her children and loves them—commits atrocious crimes?

A child can be used as a symbolic credential, a sentimental object, a badge of self-righteousness. I question the implicit belief that only “mothers” with “children of their own” have a real stake in the future of humanity.

I realized that that was how heartbreak occurred. Your heart wants something, but reality resists it. Death is inert and heavy, and it has no relation to your heart’s desires.

Or do we simply view the loss of parents as the most tragic of situations, so that a person who overcomes such a circumstance is necessarily imbued with some aspect of heroism?

Yes, there is that dark, terrifying loneliness that scares me, but I am acquainted with fear. If I stay inside it long enough, root my heels in deeper, it doesn’t feel scary anymore. It feels like home.