Grief, mortality and FEEL
It’s currently 12:29am, Sunday March 30th, I’m sitting in the living room of my (parents’) house staring at a photograph I made of my grandfather who passed away on March 9th. I have worn an article of clothing that’s black for the past 21 days, my longest streak and I have shed so much tears, I could fill an aquarium (word to K. Dot). But this isn’t about my tears or sadness, even though this is being written as I listen to Wretch 32 say “lately deaths been getting ever so close, been feeling spirits while I drive, I should get me a ghost”.
There’s a lot of hilarity in that line for me because the past 6 months have been me constantly feeling spirits. This piece came to me as an idea as I was cleaning the kitchen as I gave mum a break. I wanna talk about watching parents grieve and how that forces you to face the reality of mortality, Meek Mill’s verse on Proud of Me and the conversations I’ve had about it and how I really feel like K. Dot’s FEEL.
My dad lost both his parents before I turned 10, my relationship with both of them have always felt like fragments instead of complete memories. I kinda remember grandpa Joshua telling me the story of David & Goliath (I was 2 so maybe I made this up?) and remember him dying in our house. Grandma Esther is a lot more blurry. I remember her teaching me how to dip bread into a mug of hot chocolate but that’s about it. My mum lost her mother when I was about 7? I remember that day very vividly. We were getting ready to go to school, we had been dressed and had breakfast, my mum’s siblings walked to the courtyard, told her her mother passed and my mum immediately passed out. They used FOUR buckets of water to revive her. That memory is SEARED into my brain. So when grandpa John Opuni Baah got sick, I just started replaying that in my head. I was very worried about my mother passing out in a similar fashion. Every phone call from her started with “Kwaku, don’t worry, your grandpa is still alive”. I watched, from afar (I was in Seattle at that time) as my mother navigated this and all I could think about is how painful it must be for a woman in her 60s to deal with this. But then I started thinking about my parents aging and what that means for me and my siblings. I’m seeing a lot of friends lose parents and this is now something I need to keep an eye out for. “But I don’t have my shit together, everything’s falling apart”, I would think to myself as I say a prayer every night and try to convince God to give my parents and I more time together. I saw a tweet a long time ago that said “if you get lucky, you get 60 christmases with your parents here” and that’s been top of mind as well. How can I maximize my time with my parents? How can I make sure I am present and available? The hourglass is spending the sand at an alarming rate and I need to grab a hold on to the fabric of time, as much as I can.
Watching my dad grieve his sister and my mum grieve her dad, at the same time, in the same house, has just put me in a mental space of extreme confusion and gratitude. For most of our lives, we can’t truly reconcile the fact of our parents’ humanity and their heroism, at least I can’t. But this time has shown me that in the 60 year old casings we call bodies, live two very childlike people who cry and weep and ask questions like “so this is it?”, I mean how odd, hilarious and resetting it is to see this happen in real time? I don’t know but seeing my parents grieve has proven to me that we are all the same deep down, our mortality is as tangible as the banana I’m currently eating.
Over the past few weeks, I have had some very deep conversations about death, I mean with all the loss I’ve experienced, it’s inevitable but what’s been one of the major drivers is Meek Mill. It all started with my friend Felix, we had this very extensive conversation about the quality of the Meek verse on Proud of Me.
Proud of Me is a track by Fridayy, an artist I’m a fan of since God Did and his self-titled debut album, Stand By Me is an insane record! Felix was just stating the technical prowess Meek was showing on the record. I listened and broke down, I obviously have my father around so I can’t relate to that kind of loss but the bar “Swear to God, I’d trade in all these riches to get Robbie back” got me. I think anyone who’s lost someone could relate to that. Money can’t give us our loved ones back as Meek so eloquently states
“Money rule the world, but you can’t pay God with it I’d spend it all just to get back my niggas”.
I remember having a conversion with M****** about this verse. He had said that this verse hit him so hard because he could relate to the part where Meek says
“Scared to show up at your grave ’cause I might try dig you out”.
He lost his father at a very young age and relates to that pain extensively. As I thought about writing this piece, I decided to play this song for my dad. I wanted to hear his thoughts about Meek’s writing. My father isn’t a hiphop guy, he listens to hymns and classical music. His exploration of secular music ends with Kwabena Kwabena’s Aso. I handed him my Sony headphones and sat next to him as he listened, about 2 minutes in, tears just rolled down his face. He just kept shaking his head. I felt bad and paused the music but he asked to finish it. I later asked him why he felt that way and he quoted the money line. It’s crazy that Meek Mill wrote something that transcends generations and creates a common ground for all of us to experience and face our pain.
I have gone on to have several conversations about this verse with friends and family alike and the reaction seems to be universal; “thank you for writing something we needed, Meek”.
I handle almost everything in my life by making a playlist;
Road trip? Playlist.
Bored? Playlist.
Death? Playlist.
break up? Playlist.
Fall in love? Playlist.
When I got back from London in January, I started working on a playlist called “Conflicted”. The playlist started because I sent this tweet out.
At that moment, I truly felt this way. I had gotten news that my film, The Art, The Artist & The Enthusiast was being played at African Film Society’s Shorts at the Park but at the same time processing Michelle’s death. So am I blessed or cursed? I thought a lot about Dave’s Survivor’s Guilt…that record might as well have been written by me.
As time’s gone on, the playlist has morphed into more than my conflicted mood, it’s become a daily dose. And now the records I cannot get enough of are FEEL and ELEMENT by Kendrick Lamar. ELEMENT is mainly because of the boastful tone (sometimes we all need a lil shit talking) but FEEL…ain’t nobody praying for me! I can start quoting bars from this record but there’s no bar on here I can’t relate to. Now I know for a fact my parents pray for me and my ancestors do too on the other side but life’s cards have been so shitty that this is how I FEEL. I don’t know, I just relate to the record so damn much.
Usually I have a brilliant soliloquy to end these pieces but I don’t have one. This started at ungodly hours and got finished about 12 hours later. I am returning to balance lately and I am happy and proud of that. I am so proud of how I have handled myself and my losses in the past 3 months. It’s not easy but God’s got me. If I had something smart to say, it would be perfectly encapsulated in Little Simz’s Free, released on Friday.
If you read all this, thank you. I love you and we all gon’ be aight…we have to! Conflicted playlist below.
