Love, Loss and every L in between
Hey you,
I had a different issue planned for this month but I can't write that one now.
On the 21st, I turned a year older. Ose, one of my closest friends, was one of the first people to call me. Before we hung up, he promised we'd go to Milk and Honey the following week after work for our milkshakes. That was what we always did, and there was always a next time.
Then came the 23rd.
My phone rang, it was his partner. And she said, "Ose did not wake up this morning."
Seven words that I'm going to keep replaying in my head for the rest of my life.
It felt like a joke, a poorly timed prank. I remember staring at my phone right after she ended the call, spiraling, dialing his number like he was going to answer it. I got nothing. I immediately called our mutual friends one after the other, desperate for someone to laugh and say it was a lie. But they all said the same thing. No one was laughing. What do you mean dead? Ose? My Ose?
I cried buckets of tears. And then I had to find a way to hold myself together just enough to console his sister and his partner, while my own heart was also splintering into a gazillion sharp pieces. At some point I stopped knowing who was comforting who, we were just three people holding each other up.
Forty-eight hours later, my friend was in the ground. Then the tears started all over again. They haven't even stopped as I type this.
You see, I've known loss before. But not this personal, not this young, not this unprecedented. No sickness, no hospital runs, no warning signs. He simply went to sleep, and life as all of us knew it changed.
Let me tell you about him because he deserves to be talked about.
We met as undergraduates, and we were complete opposites. He was so tall that next to him I looked tiny, which is how I got my nickname. He called me "midget" from the day we became friends, and I never once asked him to stop. He tried to get me to play FIFA, I tried to get him to read fiction. Neither of us ever won, but we never stopped trying either.
He could burn water if he tried to boil it, so I always made sure he had an extra plate of food when I was cooking. When I slept off, he was the one who locked my doors. That was what our friendship looked like and neither of us ever kept score.
And we had a ritual. Twice every month, we went to Milk and Honey. I'd make him get me a milkshake, and I always got him brioche bread, because he had a thing for brioche. We were such good friends that I became friends with his partner and his sister too. His people became my people. Maybe that's why this hurts the way it does. I didn't lose just him, but I'm sitting in this grief with the whole circle he held together and every one of us is missing the same person.
I realized recently that we never fought. The extent of our drama was always what new food to try next. I keep replaying our conversations in my head. How he called me midget. How much he hated driving in Lagos and complained about it every single time. How he loved reading the pieces I wrote. He used to tell me I was his favorite writer. I don't know if he fully meant it or was just being a good friend, but he said it and I held on to it. Every time I published one of these newsletters, I knew he'd read it without ever having to ask.
So I'm writing this one for him. He cannot read it, but I'm writing it anyway.
I've been thinking about the title of this issue, "love, loss and every L in between." Because that's what this feels like. Love came first. Then loss. And in between, so many other Ls: laughter, longing, memories, and the lump in my chest when I pass a place we used to be regulars.
What I know now is that you can't have the first L without the second. The pain I feel right now is the exact size of the love I had. It's this heavy because he mattered this much. When I think about him, I cry and then I smile at the exact same moment. I remember a random funny thing he said, and for a second he's right there. Grieving someone will never get easier, and I cannot say everything happens for a reason because there was absolutely no reason for me to lose my friend this way.
Ose, thank you for the locked doors, every attempt to get me to be a gamer, the milkshakes, the rides home and every time you called me your favorite writer. I'll keep writing. I'll keep telling the stories. One day I'll walk into Milk and Honey again, order the milkshake, and get the brioche anyway.
Rest well, my friend. Midget loves you.
Toodlesđź’•