Notes On Grief

Notes On Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction

2021 Alfred A. Knopf

Finished on December 2, 2021

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publisher's Blurb:

During the brutal summer of 2020, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father, a celebrated professor at the University of Nigeria and an irreplaceable figure in a close-knit family, succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Notes on Grief is Adichie's tribute to him, and a moving meditation on loss. 

Here Adichie offers a candid snapshot of the shock, loneliness, and disillusionment that followed the news of her father's death. Her family, unable to be together except for on video calls, struggles to go through the rites of mourning amid a global crisis of unimaginable scale. As Adichie wrestles with his passing, she recalls with vivid, poignant detail who her father was: a remarkable survivor of the Biafran war, a man of kindness and charm, and a fierce supporter of his youngest daughter. Here is a uniquely personal, profound work of remembrance and hope by one of today's luminaries--a book to bring us together in a time when we need it most. 

Notes On Grief has been on my library list for several months and I finally picked up a copy after being reminded of the book when I read Robin's (A Fondness For Reading) recent blog post. I know that there are people who steer clear of books about death and grief, but I gravitate toward them, hoping to learn and understand from each author's perspective and experience. I've collected dozens of passages about grief from numerous books and find comfort in the shared sentiments on the death of a loved one. The following are two of Adichie's that spoke to me.

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It's from crying, I'm told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue unbearable bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart--my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here--is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odd with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. 

and

I am filled with disbelieving astonishment that the mailman comes as usual and that people are inviting me to speak somewhere and that regular news alerts appear on my phone screen. How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is permanent scattering?

Notes on Grief is a slim, compact book that can easily be read in one sitting. Perhaps that is why I wasn't as moved as I've been when reading other books on grief. The reader is given a mere glimpse into Adiche's family life and while it is very obvious that she was extremely close to her father, I felt that I was held at arm's length from her very personal story. The above passages resonated with me (particularly the one about the world going on), but I was not moved to tears as I have been while reading other memoirs on this subject. Overall, I'm glad I read this touching book, but I wish it had been longer. Recommend getting a copy from the library.