24 years apart: Picking up the leftovers in friendship and loss

Noun:

death: a damaging or destructive state of affairs
disappearance: an act of someone or something ceasing to be visible
forgetting: deliberately cease to think of

"I was always quick to forget/ and those hands of mine/ grasped only the intangible"- Pablo Neruda

i: beginning

Many literary scholars have attempted to classify Pablo Neruda's poem Memory into various thematic concerns. For some, they argue that it is the poet coming into acceptance of his duty in writing his truth and the struggle that comes with remembering: places, blades of grass, untidy event, and what he calls the texture of pain. Rightfully so, even as the first line of the poem sells it out as what might be considered a writer's burden. Neruda, in the twilight of his writing career, knows so well how remembering and forgetting are two possible contradictions that an individual can own at the same time. He recognizes the need for forbearance in this tour-de-force, as he asks that we take pity of the poet.

My first encounter with Christina Rossetti's literary works was during my undergraduate days studying Victorian literature. I vividly can recall, picking up a popular poem of hers, and a masterpiece of that age, Remember, and how the last two lines of that poem advise forgetfulness as a form of happiness.

For over two decades, I have been coming into certain contradictions; the same alive in the works of Neruda and Rossetti. A feeling of letting go and choosing the things and events that I allow to stay. Some days see me fall apart, and other days, it is gathering the leftovers that make the difference.

Rossetti says: better by far you should forget and smile/ than that you should remember and be sad.

ii: community

Growing up, forgetting was a deliberate task, a bad habit I had to pick up just to keep the body and mind in check, while disappearance was watching the small community around me fall apart. Sometimes, it is the reality of this community we grew up in, pointing us to an escape route; or breaks us if we dare choose to stay. I knew disappearance by watching it unravel itself in the bodies of young boys whose shadows never lead back home; the roads swallow up the girls early. I see friends going into limbo too. So, we are taught how to forget; how to harvest silences into our mouths.

I grew up in a place where the walls have ears and each household tries as much as possible to hoard its secret to itself. Here, the people say "a witch cried yesterday, a child dies today, who doesn't know that the witch that cried yesterday killed the child that died." As connected as everyone was or seemed to be, we had a caveat for the part of ourselves we share or let visible, but people disappear still; and you are told not to talk about these things.

I was young, when Effiong, three, my neighbour, grew a strange sickness and died. The news of Effiong's disappearance filtered into my ears on a Friday afternoon after returning back from school. I was twice his age, and I could tell how I became memorabilia for sad days; that there was no manual in reacting to grief, so I teach myself to quiet the memories, the loudness, and laughter of joy. The adults were equally as broken as we were, so nobody dares mention these things. We inherit the silences of each other, embrace the sadness of our being, and have this communion of hope that another sad news doesn't gather footwears of mourners at our doorstep anytime soon. Effiong's death is the earliest form of disappearance I can recall.

Here, death was a common denominator for everyone, young and old. It was a hand-me-down each household shared; and yet you find ways to live with the trauma. Disappearance was its euphemism.

iii: names, people…

John went away and resurrected one Saturday afternoon in the nursery note I found in my bookshelf. John (was) should be the first person I called best friend, and the many adjectives we use for lovers who leave marks on us. I and John were conjoined by faith, church, school, and the many things that characterize childhood innocence and friendship. With time, we aged into a conduit of teenage exuberance and grew apart. Some days, like the Saturday afternoon, when he resurrected back into time, I wonder where or how John fare. I wonder if I ever cross his mind or if our growing apart hurts him the same way it does to me. I wonder if his body is as fragile as mine, too fragile to carry the joy of the past with the trouble| grief of the present.

I've learned to filter the memories I allow to stay. I love John still

With Remi and Somto, I knew what differences could write itself to mean. Somto, light complexion, fits as a happy place; lived his life like it was mine. Remi was a young girl, black skin, beautiful and intelligent. Somto often reminds me of the art of failing forward, Remi reminds me of the gift of being whole in oneself. Days like today when I write about this letting go, I sit in the corner of my room, trying to paint the memories I had with this duo back then in school. If childhood girlfriend was a thing, it definitely had to be Remi; and Somto was the hyphen alternating that space.
I've had the opportunity of catching a glimpse of Somto's happiness in a moving Lagos bus; him staring from afar searching for memories and recognition in my face. Remi often finds ways to come along: but we've been over a decade apart, and I can only hope the odds are in her favour.

Sometimes, I fail in forgetting, fail to morph into a new year like the past years never existed. How does one forget and turn a blind eye to those who have chosen never to go away? I carry these burdens and contradictions after all.

iv: places

When I'm asked what childhood felt like, I'm always in search of words, in search of a person or a thing to explain what this means. Sometimes, I find the right expression in the little things and places like Liham.

Liham was the primary school I attended, owned by the Tokunbo Johnson family. A kind of nostalgia often wrecks my heart when I talk about Tokunbo Johnson, it's like watching a lover go. Something close to heartbreak. Tokunbo Johnson made me fall in love with poetry and the beauty of language at a tender age. Each assembly had us sing poems that have now become a part of my existence. I love Tokunbo Johnson the same way I love John Keats' The naughty boy, the same way I love reciting the Old Duke of York, the same way the old Roger loves the apple tree. I don't know if Tokunbo Johnson is still living or dead. I reduce the conversation as much as possible

Liham connects the gaps between me, John, Somto, and Remi; but nothing gives and takes like it. I've had to talk about Femi, Yinka, Tunde, and the many names that now escapes my memory in the best possible ways; but for every moment I remember these names, Liham grows itself into such conversation and it breaks me all over again. Like hiding my second hands in a polythene bag just to give it a semblance of new; and my mum looking her best to make me feel among. I wonder if time forgets.

v: love

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -- because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep. Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart- Pablo

Pablo Neruda in an interview with Eric Bockstael, had identified himself as a poet of love, and it's in this space he writes what he calls the consequences of his emotions. I often find myself thinking about the lovers I once shared this heart with when I pick up Neruda's poems. Sometimes, the poems find a body in Remi and Rejoice. I know when my heart falls in love: it's the pretty follies that it commits.

Rejoice had been a metaphor for grace and men who never stay. I remember we became friends when her family relocated to my community, but faith made our bond stronger. I love Yaba, but Yaba breaks the feeble; and like every other day, I pray to God's heaven that it doesn't find anyone as an example. With Rejoice it did.

Rejoice was the second in the family of six, a young girl free at heart, and that was her flaws. With Rejoice, I knew love sometimes comes in the most unexpected ways. We were little folks sharing love into ourselves: innocent and free and wished a future together in God's earth.

But Rejoice was thirteen when she left home, sixteen when she had her first baby. She was broken by the things and people she chose to love. Sometimes, I blame myself for not doing enough; not guarding this fragile soul against the blades. I blame myself that maybe, I could have watched more often and helped her find herself outside the vileness that here brings. But how does a child raise a child? I often ask myself. Rejoice has chosen not to go away.

vi: lost

May your silhouette never dissolve on the beach; may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don't leave me for a second, my dearest, because at that moment you'll have gone so far I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking, Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying? Pablo

My secondary school experiences explain the irony that in a person or place, you can cultivate the same degree of love and hate. For Pablo, there is a looking forward to a coming; here, for me, it is escaping. Yaba Tech Secondary School holds so much in itself: the tug is in letting go. Sometimes, it's reminiscing the shame that comes with repeating a class and learning how to forgive oneself or the collage of friends we curate in the rowdiness of a classroom. Sometimes it's the gossip about relationships that were never true or the shame of never being enough. Sometimes it's the friend you love so much, but don't know how you feel about catching up with: a numbness, an excitement, a contradiction, a fear, a feeling you can't explain: Oyinda, Oreoluwa, Tomilola, Temitope, Blessing, Modupe, Ope, Seyi, Onyinye, the boys still here.

While the social media space makes the world a small congested room, my paranoia jumps in whenever I get a notification that I'm added to an Alumni group. I love to be in my space and watch everyone attempt to reinvent the past, resurrect dead conversations; but how do I explain this feeling, that as much as I want to get along, there are memories that scream escape!

I seek answers to these questions, this contradiction. I’ve been told to enjoy the now and look forward to the uncertainty of the future. I look at those around me in this present and hope they always remain here. I want to share the joy in the miracle of existing, of being here creating memories; but I can’t help this knowing, that Jacobson, Justin, Ireti, Faith, Dorcas, Jill, Jane, Ruth, David ..., once used to be here- and this thought breaks me often.

vii: disappearance

I’m finding reconciliation in the knowing that people disappear.