NOTES ON GRIEF

An affecting paean to the author’s father, James Nwoye Adichie (1932-2020).

“I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense.” So writes award-winning Nigerian novelist Adichie, reflecting on her father’s remarkable life in this slim volume. The first professor of statistics in his country, James lived an eventful and sometimes fraught life. During the Biafran War, for instance, Nigerian soldiers burned all his books, which American colleagues rushed to replace—and, Adichie adds, sent bookshelves as well. He courted the author’s mother sight unseen: A relative bragged about the young scholar, saying he needed an educated wife: “A relative of hers said that she was educated and beautiful, fair as an egret. Fair as an egret! O na-enwu ka ugbana! Another standing family joke.” Funny and principled, James died during the pandemic—not of the virus but kidney disease. Compounding her grief was distance, and Adichie and her siblings followed Igbo tradition by making an “immediate pivot from pain to planning.” In one Zoom call after another, they arranged a burial on an approved Friday that’s not a holiday, since Fridays are the one day the parish priest will bury an elderly person—and, Adichie writes, not being given a proper funeral is a fear that amounts to existential dread among people of her father’s generation. She moves through some of the classic stages of grief, including no small amount of anger—at the well-meaning but empty word demise as well as the ineffectual condolences of well-meaning people: “ ‘It has happened, so just celebrate his life,’ an old friend wrote, and it incensed me.” Eventually, the author reflects on a newfound awareness of mortality and finds a “new urgency” to live her life and do her work in the ever present shadow of death.

An elegant, moving contribution to the literature of death and dying.