the finite
life's mortality, grief and funerals + everything is temporary
written on february 17, 2025: 11.02pm
This essay came from a lot of grief. A lot of time and space I held for people’s grief and my own. I wish I could say anything else, but for me 2025 has started being taken by the impact of death of close family friends and my hometown. Most of my poetry and writing has been on this. I’m also saddened to say that the 90-year-old man I am writing on at the end has passed away a week ago.
If you’re feeling strong, read this. If you’re looking for comfort, hopefully my words from grief can give it to you.
There’s a line in this where I say “I am desensitised by it, I guess.” - I am not. Every news of death and every another afternoon spent in a church saying goodbye to someone gone is different, individual. Grief is an universal language. All that helps me at the moment is that grief is our only evidence that we are so capable of loving and being loved. Hug someone you sincerely love after this one. Tell them you love them. You never know when it’s the last time.
written on sunday, jan 19, 2025: 11.34am
Over two months ago now, I hold a phrase, so simple and so short, close to my heart. It’s there when it fears to break into pieces, and when it’s doing the work of repairing all those small bruises. I don’t have wounds, I do have bruises though.
Last night I was driving home with my Mama’s partner and we talked about how AI makes human beings look in their designs and I vented on how much I miss the creases and wrinkles on the human body. What are we, if not physical bodies that tell you ‘I’ve lived, I’ve cried, I’ve fought, I’m still alive though’.
The phrase is “Everything’s temporary.”
I pulled it from a card deck at an event
hosted in Baltimore. Before the important phrase it said “I’m not suck, I’m not stuck, I’m not stuck”.As I’m home for a good week now already, have tried to settle back in, but also enjoy the slowness in not having to rush to unpack cause we’ll be here for a couple of weeks. And we’re familiar with the space, we don’t have to spread our things around the room to feel more home, we are home.
The first week back home was tainted, I’m trying to find a more neutral word - maybe painted - The first week back home was painted by a big funeral.
A legend in our village has passed away beginning of the year already. At an age that isn’t that far away from my Dad’s. A funeral that made the church absolutely cramped to the bricks. People stood outside, the minister prepared speakers to the outside for everyone to hear the speeches by all these people that have known this man and that have had the honour to let him touch their worlds and perspectives.