My father’s death, when I was a teenager, brought a gradual awakening to the constant presence of death around us. Before this, death was only for the old, those whose time had arrived. My grandfathers were my only reference; I had buried both when I was young, recalling their funerals merely as family gatherings. Within the Luo cultural context, my early association with funerals was a family reunion; I met several relatives for the first time at such events. As a child, I thought death happened only to others; my most significant people were still alive and thriving. My father’s death split that curtain open. I saw what it was to sit on the family row during a funeral service, staring at the coffin as the gathering stared back in pity. His death revealed how much of life’s harshness and death’s indignity we had come to accept as ‘normal’.
I could now fully grasp empathy, no longer seeing the funeral as a single moment of a family dressed in black gathered around a freshly dug grave for final rites. I was exposed to the full spectrum: receiving the news, the panic, frantic planning, the spectacle of mourning, and the silence that follows as one navigates grief’s dark corridors alone. This experience changed my attitude, prompting me to pay attention to who else was mourning around me.
My curiosity led me to attend funerals beyond my familial circle, of people I had no blood relationship with. Mostly, this was motivated by solidarity. My father, a farmer, had cultivated friendships with the men who helped him grow crops. So, when Sore told me his cousin had died across the valley, I eagerly volunteered to help.
Initially, I didn’t understand why my presence at these humble gatherings seemed unusual. The village, like the rest of the country, recognized class; I was seen as belonging to the modern group that had lost touch with custom and tradition. Despite my urban upbringing, I wanted to belong, to be seen as part of this wider community. As a student with no income, I found novel ways to participate, contribute, and share in sorrow, as I had seen so many do for us. My solution was labor. Help was always welcome, and extra hands, especially those who came with no demands, were greatly appreciated.
Thus, I became a regular grave digger, part of a reliable cast of young men entrusted with the responsibility. Usually an overnight activity, digging a six-foot deep grave in our rocky region required skill and stamina; organized teamwork made a great difference. In the hierarchy of funeral caterers, grave diggers were typically at the pyramid’s bottom, often appeased with alcohol and food to ensure the grave was ready before the ceremony. In those days, no professional grave diggers existed; only relatives, neighbours, and friends—the men—came together as a last act of honour and duty.
Grave digging sessions varied. In the wealthier home, many ‘engineers’ and overseers would be present, with few actually digging. The men of the home sat around the grave site, drinking whisky into the night, entertained by rambunctious village characters angling for another tot of Johnny Walker. The actual labor was left to a small, hardworking cast, motivated by promised appreciation. In more humble homesteads, it was a complete harambee effort; everyone worked. Occasionally, a sponsor might buy gin for the diggers, keeping spirits warm and the atmosphere lively. Good cheer was necessary. Under the vast sky on those digging nights, the shared burden and quiet camaraderie became a communal anchor against the rising tide of despair.
During these occasions, I had my first real glimpse at despair. Inevitably, tales of the dead were told as the resting place was prepared. At one single-hut homestead, we were digging the long-suffering mother’s grave. I was introduced to her eldest son, a few years younger than me. They called him a ‘total orphan’ now that his mother and father were gone. I sensed the heavy weight of duty and care for his younger siblings. With no words of comfort, we simply dug on in solidarity, ensuring his mother received a dignified funeral. In these moments, the sheer normalcy of such profound injustice began to settle in my young mind.
The grave site was an honest, truthful space. Passing conversations there revealed life’s injustice. When someone said, “Your luck is good. You still have a mother,” I finally understood the weight of the statement. I had known suffering, but not to the extent I witnessed at these recurring funerals of others—those we typically did not mourn alongside. I met grandmothers stripped of all support, now burying grandchildren they had raised. I saw the desperation of young widows, newly-weds barely rooted in the village, left exposed to domineering male relatives and cantankerous female in-laws. Fathers buried good sons who had lifted them out of poverty and were staring at the possibility of a reversal of fortunes.
I attended funerals where children buried their parents in places they knew as ‘our real home’ but had never truly belonged to. These were desperate times; despair had become a contagion, a proper crisis of being. My grandmother would say, “it is as if, your heart collapsed and you lose the will to live.”
The late 80s and early 90s were a period of despair; the world was in turmoil. Constant news of civil wars across the continent, new live broadcasts of the Gulf Wars, and the local fight for multiparty democracy, punctuated by brutal political suppression, all contributed to a pervasive anxiety. HIV/AIDS ravaged homesteads, often met with shame and silence. Road accidents were so frequent they were incorporated into farewell prayers; my grandmothers would add, “may God watch over you as you travel in this contraption made by human hands.”
In this period, I witnessed a series of deaths raining down on a simple village. The experience was overwhelming and numbing. Desperate attempts at meaning-making only brought back superstition, taboo, and curses to explain misfortune. In the decade following my father’s passing, we lost a whole cast of elders and promising young people. Village dynamics changed. More seemed exiled in the city as the community was disrupted. The comforting harmony was lost, and the village became a place we only returned to for funerals.
Yet, my memory returns to these humble homesteads through the tumultuous decades when I think of resilience. Despite misfortune, people always pushed back against despair. Grandmothers, who barely mustered a meal, would receive a token of appreciation with such grace, you’d think they won a lottery. There was always hope, always a bright side, always some good to find even in the worst situations. Their ‘leave it to God’ was not resignation, but a deep well of active faith that watered their daily, defiant acts of living.
I did not fully grasp the strength behind this mindset until only recently, in my own reflections on loss. Our village, like many others, is a village of widows, and I noticed patterns among these women I called my mothers and grandmothers. They almost never downplayed the consequence of loss or life’s misery. They learned to stare squarely at challenges, to splutter out what pained them, to say it and be done with it.
Life’s troubles—from the mundane annoyance of a neighbor’s cat stealing a fish, to a health emergency requiring money for a sister’s child far away—would be discussed. Then, they’d speak of someone else with more immediate problems, also deserving attention, before sighing, “What do we do, my child? We leave it to God.” What was beyond their control was surrendered; the responsibility of effort remained a daily choice. In the face of overwhelming tragedy, they instinctively sought refuge in divine anchoring. From the recently reformed grandmother who no longer smoked but wouldn’t turn her nose up at an occasional sip, to the evangelist who punctuated every statement with Hallelujah, all were aware of their limits and found solace in grace and mercy. They were the ones who kept a steady cadence through the seasons, who talked about their lives as a gift, and always reminded us to pray.
Those prayers held up homesteads through generations, against tough odds. They raised children who recognized the value of sacrifice and the call of duty. In the space of spiritual anchoring, mothers are our perennial teachers. In seasons of deep despair, spiritual anchors are needed. Or at least the awareness to know that it is healthy to seek intervention in the face of feelings of helplessness.
News headlines show footage of state violence victims, removed, sanitized, happening “over there” to unfortunate souls. When a public protest against unlawful killings leads to more unlawful killings, police are reported as being praised for doing a good job in maintaining law and order. When hired goons infiltrate streets and attack citizens, it is characterized as gang rivalry that spills onto the streets. For a generation waking up to the ruthlessness of power, it’s jarring to contemplate the future, the Orwellian image of the boot stamping on a human face—forever.
In the news: A young girl was killed while in her house. A lady in Europe showed me her picture, watching daily scenes from home on YouTube during her commute to a cleaning job in Amsterdam. She told me she was worried about the protests. These Gen Zs. She has two. She told them not to go outside, not to join the demonstrations, that it wasn’t safe. Now she zooms in on the young face on her phone, wondering what else to tell her boys. Even staying indoors isn’t safe, apparently. What to do? Despair. But she remembers to focus on only what she can control and instinctively says a prayer for her boys.
This generation, perhaps intuitively, is attempting to rewire their life script. They started on the fringe, morphing into a national collective of shared resolve who refuse to remain unheard and unseen. They cannot unsee what they have seen. In their agitation for agency, they tell us that what we see as normal, is not normal.
P.S. This reflection on grief and normalcy is drawn from my meditations on death, grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of Reflections on the ones we lost, drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.
