Notes on Grief

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.

I loved my father so much, so fiercely, so tenderly,

one of my favorite things in the world was just to hang out with my father. To sit with him and talk about the past was like reclaiming gorgeous treasure that was always mine anyway. He gave me my ancestry in finely sketched stories. I not only adored him in that classic manner of a daddy’s girl, but I also liked him so much. I like him. His grace and his wisdom and his simplicity, and how utterly unimpressionable he was.

“Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.”

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

There is a sensation that is frightening, of a receding, of an ancestry slipping away, but at least I am left with enough for myth, if not memory.