by OP | Aug 20, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost
The viewing room of the morgue was cold and impersonal. The walls creamy white, the fluorescent lights still on and casting a glow, even though it was approaching midday. The smell of antiseptic was strong. Overhead, a white fan hummed. A row of white plastic chairs sat against the wall. Three people were seated on them. A woman dressed in a tailored black dress was flanked by two men. The older one, was stout with a head of grey hair. The scarf around his neck had a distinguished knot. A retired diplomat, perhaps. The woman held a bouquet of stiff stemmed flowers, wrapped in ribbons. She leaned on the older man’s arm, cutting the picture of a dutiful daughter. The other man was middle-aged, strapping, in jeans and polo shirt with expensive details. They looked respectable in their stoic grief and also out of place.
The woman ‘s name was Gladys. She received a phone call late in the afternoon, during a visit to her parents’ house with the children Jafari and Tahira.
A strange number. It was against her character to pick up numbers she did not recognise. She thanked God she did. A woman’s heavy voice came on,
“Are you mama Jafari…I know you don’t know me..Mimi ni Lavender…aki,I am so sorry I am calling you with very bad news?”
“Your husband!”
“What’s wrong with Wilson?”
“Wilson amefariki”
Her father heard a scream from the living room and thought she had been stabbed and sprinted. He could not recall ever seeing her weeping so openly. Her mother held her through the convulsions. When the children came, they started crying too, though no one had told them. They felt it.
By the evening, the immediate family had made arrangements. Gladys, her father and her brother-in-law, Wilson’s younger brother, Tolbert would travel to Malindi to identify the body. Tolbert had worried about this outcome, that his older brother would die shamefully and leave them with the heavy responsibility of dealing with his mess.
They had arrived on the first flight from Nairobi via Mombasa to Malindi to claim the body of a lost and found husband.They had one priority, to transfer the body to Lee funeral home in Nairobi.
Gladys had last seen Wilson three months ago. The occasion was warm. Jafari’s birthday party. He really bonded with the kids. It felt like family again, too good to be true and then, he had to return to Malindi. She knew he was living with somebody, Lavender, Lavi, and they had been others. The scandal had already broken out. Things were said, friends lost. She was deeply hurt and had thought she had gotten over it, choosing forgiveness, for the sake of the children who still loved their father. Of all the scenarios she had painted, she had never imagined he would die and not like this.
A lean young man walked into the room, dressed in a light blue overalls and identified himself as the mortician and apologised for keeping them waiting. He prepared the family for the procedure, outlining the steps that had been taken to register the body, the possessions retained, the condition of the body, the accompanying medical report and the manner the body would be wheeled in and where they were to stand.
As he disappeared behind the door, the calm atmosphere was shattered. A blast of blaring boda boda horns, shrill whistles and riotous wailing erupted from outside, followed by a group of men and women waving freshly cut twigs. Her father jerked upright, the diplomatic composure gone. “We’re under attack,” he announced in panic, confirming every security concern he’d voiced about coming to Malindi.
“Bloody hell! The locals are here?” said Tolbert, walking towards the open entrance to get a better view.
Four women burst into the room, just as the aluminum-plated trolley was wheeled in. They were wailing, draping themselves on the casket, pacing about in lamentation, completely disrupting the mortician’s rehearsed order of viewing.
‘Wilson! Wilson! What have you done! Wilson?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Wake up Wilson”.
“Where am I going to find another gentleman?”
Gladys read the suspended look of disbelief on her father’s face as clearly as if he’d shouted,
“What on god’s earth is going on here?”
Tolbert blurted out what must have been his inner thoughts
“Who are these people? Is this a prank?”
The mortician seemed unmoved. He stood across from his assistant holding the bars of the trolley, unaffected by the commotion in the room. So the wailing continued and Gladys stared alongside the men, unable to summon a response to the overwhelming grief they were witnessing. At the double door entrance, a group of men in reflector jackets, whistles dangling from their necks, spectated.
Then Tolbert got impatient and confronted the mortician.
“Who are these people, what are they doing here? This is a private moment?”
That statement set one of the women off,
“And who are you?” she pointed at Tolbert
He thrust out his chest and threw his arms back, his designer polo shirt stretching tight across his shoulders.
“I am his brother and who are you?”
The mortician directed his attention and pleaded with Lavender to hold her tongue but she would not comply.
“So what? Ask her! Ask, who called her! I am the Lavender! Yes! The Lavender that called you yesterday”.
Gladys looked at her, and the woman’s face clicked into place like the final, frustrating piece of a puzzle she’d been trying to forget.
This face had broken her marriage.
She had found a picture on his phone and confronted him but he denied it.Then six months later, he accidentally forwarded messages meant for Lavender to her phone and she took a screen shot before he could delete them. He moved out the next weekend.
Tolbert was still staring at her, expecting a denial and permission to turn on his rage. Instead Gladys just asked,
“So you are the Lavender?”
“I am the Lavender”
That only seemed to agitate Tolbert and he barked at the mortician,
“Can these people not give us room to mourn as his family”
“Can they just leave us alone with my brother?”
Lavender shot back,
“Where were you when he was dying? If I didn’t have a good heart, would I have taken him to hospital with my own money and brought him here?”
“I won’t be so sure until I see the autopsy report”
“How is this person talking?”
“Mr. Mortician, I think you should take charge and kick these people out, we need time to be with our brother”
Gladys could hear the voices getting heated but her mind was on the children. How was she going to explain this to them? The mortician’s tone changed.
“Please Mister. We do not use that kind of language here. Please, I don’t tell you how to do your job, let’s respect each other here, Please this is also my office”.
Then he turned to plead with Lavender, urging to calm her words and instructed that Wilson’s immediate family would view first, followed by Lavender and her group. Having regained control of his office, he gently opened the lid.
Gladys was overcome. The two men supported her to the chair and sat her down. Tolbert wrestled with the wrapper on a water bottle.
The wailing began again, the four women surrounding the coffin, each in dialogue with their Wilson. Gladys noticed that the mortician was not bothered by their melodrama.
Lavender’s long red nails stroked Wilson’s hair, her fingers running through it as if trying to stimulate every follicle. She talked to him in a singsong voice, singing a lullaby. This was the vulnerability Wilson had never shown her. Just his demons
Benta in the shimmering skirt, one size too small was leaning heavily on the casket. Thick-set and known as his drinking buddy. She was torn, a whimpering child. The toughness had left her body and surrendered to grief.
Rael’s eyes were red and teary, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. Her hand covered her mouth as she stared blankly. She was the one who used to be a dancer in a live band. The investigator found pictures on her Facebook profile of the wild fling in Mauritius. The age difference was a scandal but by this time, Wilson had stopped caring what people thought.
Grace fussed over his clothes, adjusting his tie while murmuring in a low tone. She was the most mysterious of them. The private investigator had discovered little on her. What she remembered was that she nursed Wilson when he first got sick and had fallen out with Lavender and he kept returning to his nurse in time of need.
Gladys realised that this was a final goodbye. They were not faking emotion. They knew her husband of 12 years in ways she could not imagine. These were the arms that he ran to for refuge.
The mortician summoned the women and indicated that he needed to close the casket and return the body to storage. The women were reluctant to let go. As the trolley was wheeled away, someone had to peel off Lavender and Benta’s hands from its edge. Gladys was back on her feet watching Wilson’s body return to the storage room.
When Lavender turned around, she met Gladys’s eyes.
Two women in different states of distress.
Their worlds had clashed in such an inglorious encounter.
Gladys recognised something familiar in her eyes. Lavender had seen his brokenness. She knew Wilson. She knew that man too, but he was also so many others.
She held her gaze and asked:
“What did he ask you to tell me”
P.S. This reflection on a wife’s loss 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 understanding amidst loss.
by OP | Aug 13, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost
Dani died two days ago. The family gathered on a Saturday afternoon at Dani’s old house in Loresho, a Nairobi suburb. The parking lot was full and the cars had spilled onto the roadside, outside the imposing maroon metal gate. Dani had been a widow for two decades and it was evident that she was loved. As the matriarch of the family, everyone seemed to hold a special memory of this bungalow and her sudden absence sparked a family reunion that had the hallmarks of a celebration amidst the mourning. She had just turned 90, but no one had suspected she would be gone barely three months after celebrating a spirited 90th birthday.
All her children arrived, a contingent of uncles, aunties, cousins, nephews, nieces, and friends who appeared as though responding to a family roll call.
The home was buzzing with activity, with every room having an assembly of people. Tanya, Dani’s granddaughter had drifted away from the pack of children playing hide and seek between the cars in the front yard. Dani’s brown chair by the window was empty and beside it on a low stool, sat her weathered, black leather-bound Bible.
Tanya wondered where she had gone. In Dani’s room upstairs, she found her bed empty, her aunties crying, holding each other and her older cousin hushed her out of the room when she asked why they were crying. She had looked for Dani throughout the house, moving through the crowd of people into the sprawling backyard and in the corner under the shade of tall trees, she spotted her favourite uncle and someone she didn’t recognise.
Oti was Dani’s youngest, the baby of the family who’d married less than a year ago, in part, due to the pressure of his mother who had threatened several times,
“You better marry Nya Kigali before I die?”
Oti was with Mash, his best man at his wedding and they had been friends since college. They were reminiscing about the wedding and how happy Dani had been at the event when they noticed Tanya running towards them. Mash hurriedly threw his half-smoked cigarette onto the ground and squashed it, keeping his shoe over the cigarette butt.
(more…)
by OP | Aug 6, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost
The picture was strange. I couldn’t make sense of it.
“Are you a geographer or surveyor?” I asked.
Why do you ask that?
“This looks like a satellite picture of some kind of mountain range”
He stared at the picture as if seeing it for the first time. There was a pregnant pause. Something had shifted in the air.
“ it’s an ultrasound image”.
I was so off, I felt embarrassed.
“ It’s an ultrasound image of my son, Myles”.
I should have made the connection because there were no other pictures with children. Just a framed picture of the couple.
“How old is Myles now?”
That silent pause returned and his look became forlorn.
“Let’s just say, Myles would have been six this year?’
“I am so sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. You would not have known”.
As a coach, I knew to hold my tongue. Don’t minimise the loss. Don’t offer a motivational word of encouragement. Don’t change the topic. Don’t fall back on platitudes about “God’s will” or “God’s plan.”
Just sit in discomfort with them. Don’t move. Stay still, we just sat there, on his dining table in the small apartment staring at the pictures on the mantle.
He was silent for a long time and I resisted all temptation to fill that silence with words of comfort.
Finally he spoke, his eyes a bit glassy and he was smacking his lips, suppressing the rising emotion.
“You’re the first who didn’t feel a need to say anything”
“It’s the least I could do”, I replied.
“I wish more people understood this”, he said, staring at the ceiling as he tried to regain his composure.
“Understood what?”
He shook his head slowly and we returned to silence. Tears emerged. He wiped them away, then looked up at me, allowing me to see them. I saw a deep shame and surrender written in that gaze. He looked away again, back towards the ceiling, searching for the words in his head. Then he let out a gush of breath.
“Just listening. It is easier to talk about now. It hasn’t for a long time”
He was a 32 year old man and he had buried three children. Somehow the first three were bearable because he had held them, seen them, named them. Myles died at four months old. The twins came two years after. They were named Myles,(the 2nd) and Michael. Myles died in the first month and Michael two months later. He thought he had gotten stronger but the unborn and unnamed one nearly broke him.
He had no name and he started growing out of the womb at five months. They called it an ectopic pregnancy. His partner’s life was in danger and she had to go into surgery. He was facing that horror again.
The pain. Indescribable. He felt helpless and powerless as he watched his partner go through this recurring experience of loss. He could do nothing to relieve the pain. This wasn’t a problem that could be fixed. It rendered him silent for a year. Not more than five people knew what he had gone through. Not even his own siblings. He must have aged a decade and put on a lot of weight during that year. He became one of the walking dead, fumbling under a melancholic burden. He was both a supporter and a griever.
The other children were buried in a muslim cemetery in Nairobi. He knew where they rested. He had a place to remind him that he was still a father. I once had kids too.
But this unborn one. Still difficult to talk about.
We had settled into his small dining table with four chairs serving as divider between the dining area and the compact living room, that had a flat screen TV on a side board and a single couch. Beside the TV was the picture that set off this conversation. From his voice, I could tell that he had suffered.
“6 years man, I have been trying to be a father for six years and nothing to show”
He chuckled at the thought and I chuckled alongside when he voiced the irony.
“I see jamaas playing around, with baby mamas. They have kids that they don’t want. Can’t even pay school fees. I don’t play those games”
“Even the Wahindis, the Indians, can trust me, an African man, with their children in water”.
“I haven’t told you my story?”. I leaned in.
They were not officially married. It was a ‘come-we-stay’ arrangement that grew complicated. A christian man and his muslim girlfriend. None of them had told family that they were cohabiting and serious. When Aleena got pregnant it was a big scandal. Their secret had unraveled in the most shameful way. Barely a month after conception, tragedy struck.
The partner’s family scorned him, called him a loser and tried to scuttle the daughter to a foreign country, away from his corrupting influence. She came from the prominent side with means. He had known hardship after his parents death. His own family suffered and the siblings scattered in different directions nursing their buried hurts. The death of twins was an extremely low and humiliating moment. He was utterly helpless. He couldn’t do much to help his grieving wife and was at a loss when the second twin succumbed to a chest infection and died. That’s why he let Aleena’s family bury his children, the muslim way, in a communal cemetery.
He was even willing to convert, for some dignity. His partner had never insisted. She had also wanted to convert to christianity but it wasn’t a deal breaker for him. He didn’t share much of this journey with his own larger family. They wouldn’t understand. They would probably judge. He was going to find a way to take care of his partner. Then tragedy struck and he found himself at the mercy of the wife’s family. They were paying the hospital bill.
He was just an unimportant plus one. Part of the problem.
Three times, it happened and he was still at their mercy. Not respected but tolerated because their daughter refused to give up on him.
He recalled the years previous. They had prayed hard. Full of optimism. God of mercy, we have remained humble. This was it, the third time was a charm. We would finally break the curse,
“We too could be parents.” Then it happened again.
It crushed him completely. He became an android. It was work as a swimming coach that saved him. It gave him routine and a healthy escape. There was some fulfillment in teaching privileged kids how to swim, teaching them to get over their fear of water and become champion swimmers.
“Maybe it was also the children” I suggested
He turned his head,
“Yeah,I have never thought about it that way. I love those kids”.
“Do you stop being a parent when your children die?”
He didn’t answer and instead started talking about his stages.
Crying. Blaming. Conspiracy. Anger. Lost Helplessness. Surrender. Now he was talking. It was a good sign.
“We talked about it with Aleena. Talking helps us heal in some way because who is there to blame but yourself.You have to accept it. That feeling of constant despair. As much as it is painful, we accept. There is nothing like getting used to it. It is easiest to stay there. But the best way is to walk through it. Think of it like walking through a dark tunnel. You just have to keep walking until you see the light. I am at that stage where I see it, still far but at least I know I am walking in the right direction”.
“Wueh, you have passed through a lot”
He just nodded and continued
“Imagine, you want to share or at least confide in someone else, but they can’t really feel it. They may feel sorry, but they can’t relate. In fact they become very uncomfortable. Most people ran quickly from these topics. You get a quick “ pole sana”. We are here to support you. They ask for the Mpesa account for their contribution and tell you to be strong, God is in control. Then they are gone. Quiet”.
He had a lot to get off his chest.
“You know people talk. Your woman is always pregnant but we never see any children. Maybe the man was the problem. There is a question mark after your name.The family insinuates. We are tired of our daughter shedding blood. Imagine that. Even cheap drug addicts, who sleep in tunnels, can have children. What is wrong with me?”
I asked him what he did about it?
“So what do you do? You just have to be strong for her. You cannot burden her with your own sorrow. That’s what men do, right? Don’t talk, don’t break. But inside, my friend, shame, guilt”.
“I didn’t even want to be in a new relationship, I could not imagine going through what I went through with another person”.
I wondered how many unseen fathers were struggling to find anyone who could validate their specific loss. Losing a pregnancy, or a miscarriage, is a common and difficult experience. While the physical toll is on the carrying parent, the emotional and psychological impact is also profoundly significant for men.
We emerge from broken societies and shattered in many parts. Grief was a collective experience that was recognised as a complex and non-linear journey supported by the extended family and the wider community. No one was left to navigate alone. Where there were once sacred rituals and ceremonies, now there exist only superficial condolences and pomp. Once upon a time, a baby was conceived and instantly became a living being that we could count them among our dead and integrate them into the ancestral lineage facilitating their spiritual transition. That spiritual connection to the unborn child from conception was lost. Now we just talk in whispers about discarded foetuses with no names.
This is just an illustration of the experiences of men after a pregnancy loss. They are unseen in healthcare and societal narratives. There are many resources for women’s physical and mental health after a miscarriage, but fewer for men. This can make men feel unrecognised and alone in their grief. There is a serious gap to address in care to truly support family and community structures. In this case, healthcare policy has to change and start including fathers more in the care provided for pregnancy loss and perinatal bereavement.
“Have you ever considered adoption, IVF?”
He rubbed his fingers together. It costs money.
“There has to be a lesson in it?” I prodded further
“Yes, as we count the years, talk about them more, imagine what scenarios would have been. Keep them in our memory. We talk about them with a smile on our faces.”
“These tragedies have brought us closer. Only the two of us can truly understand. There’s no one else. The strength between us pushes us forward. I feel very safe expressing my vulnerability with my wife.”.
It was the first time he called Aleena, his wife during the entire conversation.
“We haven’t given up”.
P.S. This reflection on grief and unseen fathers is drawn from my reflections on the ones we lost and meditations on grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of insights drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.
by OP | Jul 30, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost
A man dressed in a brilliant white shirt, charcoal grey checked trousers and blue Italian loafers, sunglasses resting on his forehead, walks into a funeral home in Kisumu. It is a storeyed, sleek and modern building that could pass for a luxury furniture shop. The funeral home offers a full bereavement service, marketed as A+, catering for the VIDPs (Very Important Dead Persons).
The director, dressed in a black suit, black tie and spectacles receives the new client. There is an air about this client. He can smell the whiff of new money. Everything about him screams rich. His chubby frame, his weighted gold watch and the Porsche Cayenne parked outside, its suited driver scrolling on his phone.
The director invites him for a tour of the premises, studying the client’s face as he talks about his needs. What does he want?
“The best, the finest. A grand funeral for my mother. The whole city must witness how a great woman is buried”.
They stop at the showroom, where the coffins range from modest pine to luxurious mahogany.
The client browses quickly, running his finger over the cool teak surface as if trying to trace dust, feeling the velvet lining and rubbing his fingers together. Unimpressed he asks,
“Is this your most expensive coffin?”
“Yes”, says the director, launching into the quality details but the man interrupts him again,
“Can you make something more expensive than this?”
The director isn’t sure what the man is asking and he tries to be specific,
“This is top of the market, African teak, Iroko, termite and fungus resistant, doesn’t decay and is certified internationally as…”
The client arrogantly interrupts him,
“ Yes or No!”
The director probes further but the client lacks patience. A man unused to waiting.
“Custom for my mother. It is a simple question. Can you?”
They shake hands, a firm urgent grip. A deal has been secured. The client turns and strides out, his driver scrambling to open the Porsche’s door. As he climbs into the Porsche, he shouts back,
“My PA will call you in four days to arrange for the collection and payment”.
The director watches him leave, marveling. No one had ever agreed to pay so much for a coffin. His mind returns to the present. Haste is required. Only one craftsman can deliver quality with such short notice.
********
The coffinmaker is surprised to see the funeral director driving into his compound and straight to the workshop. He usually just calls. This must be a VIP client. The director finds the coffin maker sanding a coffin top. The room is musky with sawdust and varnish. He has known the coffin maker as a reliable, humble and gifted craftsman. Their long partnership had generated profit for both.
The funeral director hardly bothers with greetings, ignoring an invitation for tea from the coffinmaker’s wife gardening nearby, and demanded,
“Fundi, I need you to make the most expensive coffin you have ever made. Spare no costs. Four days”.
The coffinmaker said yes before truly weighing the commitment. The funeral director, disposition changed with the assurance; he waved at the coffin maker’s wife as he apologised for his rush.
“You won’t regret it. This dollar millionaire from Amsterdam is our big break” .
The coffinmaker regretted giving in so easily to the pressure from the funeral director. The director demands always made him feel like that boy again, the one who’d never wanted to be a carpenter. That was his father’s profession and he only got into so as not disappoint him. Father always said he had a talent for working with wood but the wrong attitude. Father wanted to remain a humble carpenter, making school furniture and church pews. Then tragedy struck. A big Meru oak tree was uprooted during a storm and it fell through the roof of the house. Mother escaped unharmed but father was not so lucky. A big branch landed on his back and he was never the same after that, living with constant pain.
During Father’s recuperation, the son took over the business. But father only got worse and died, four months after this.
In a rite of honour, the son carved a coffin from that fatal Meru oak. At the funeral, the mourners admired the coffin. “What a beauty, like never seen before!” And so, the coffinmaker was born.
His father believed wood was for the living and coffin making invited misfortune. Yet after this, the coffinmaking only brought prosperity. New contracts with the funeral director funded assistants and a workshop. He became “the celebrity coffinmaker”. Ironically, trees had taught him death long before he started making coffins. He had watched trees die, split logs hollowed by decay and now he mastered balancing beauty with function.
The wife tended her vegetables. That visit troubled her. The director had only come to their home once before when the workshop was opened. She disliked how her husband became so timid in the face of his endless demands. But as her husband reminded her, he paid well and on time.
This is not the right time to voice her anger at the director’s lack of manners. How could he come to their home and not even sip some water? Does he think my husband was an ATM for his coffins? Her thoughts returned to the plants. I will cook his favourite because he doesn’t eat well when working on big orders.
Then she noticed something unusual. Saplings sprouting from where the old Meru oak tree had fallen. Perhaps this was a sign. The oak had never sprouted in all these years. She dug up the strongest carefully and then wrapped its delicate roots in black plastic. It would be a wonderful surprise for her husband. Maybe he would find a special spot to plant it.
When the coffin maker’s wife came to check on her husband in his workshop, he still looked troubled.
“What is wrong, father of my children”?
“I have an impossible request. The director wants something I cannot see in my mind”.
“Leave it to God, then…”.
She held out the sapling but he did not seem to notice. Later, maybe. She placed it by the door and asked what he desired for dinner.
As his wife left, the coffinmaker sighed. After all these years, she still called them boxes. He would spend the next few hours researching the Ghanaian fantasy coffins sent by the director on WhatsApp. There was no time for that kind of grandeur. His wife had returned to the garden patch, to water her veggies. The leaves looked lush even from a distance. His mind wandered there. That spot must be very fertile and then he remembered and stood up from the chair where he had remained seated for a long time, to search the workshop.
Indeed, he still had remnants of the Meru oak, planks of wood stored over years, dusty and untouched. He had never built another coffin using Meru oak since it was impossible to find and an endangered species. This is it. This was the wood.
So the work began. For the next three days, from early morning, late into the night, the coffinmaker and his crew worked on their order. The wood fought back, hard, dry and unyielding but his hands remembered. On the fourth morning, he was laying the finishing touches on the coffin.
It looked exquisite, understated luxury. He remembered his father’s coffin. This wood was the bearer of good fortune. The rest of the raw unfinished coffins, stood in contrast at the back of the workshop, stacked like sacks of maize in a warehouse.
The funeral director arrived sweating and wiping his brow. He circled once. Twice and then paused.
“It lacks presence” running a finger over the wood as if checking for cheap veneer. “This won’t impress a Luo man who flies his tailor in from Milan. Where’s the gold? The carvings? I sent you photos!”
He needed this coffin to scream wealth and to be his advertisement to international clients.
The director was now in a foul mood. The coffinmaker laid a hand on the wood,
“This is my most valuable wood. It is from the tree that killed my father”.
The director scoffed at the explanation, wagging a finger.
“Sentimentality is for the movies. That man is ready to pay for the spectacle, marble! – not endangered firewood”.
He flashed images of gem-encrusted Ghanaian coffins on his phone.
“This is expensive. Your tree is just a dead thing that would only impress a market carpenter”.
The coffinmaker stood helpless. The funeral director’s verbal barrage was interrupted by a phone call from the client’s PA who wanted to see pictures. The director wandered off towards his car, the voice slick with persuasion.
The coffinmaker trailed him and then stopped at the entrance. Regret washed over his face as he observed the restless funeral director pacing and talking loudly into his phone. Then his eyes fell on the sapling. This was unbelievable. The oak had sprouted. Bless my wife. A sign from above. The roots peeked through the plastic, the damp earth clinging to them.
The funeral director returned. He was not losing this deal. He had bought an extra day. They walked back to the coffin and the coffinmaker suddenly shut down the lid,
“I am not making another coffin. If the client is not satisfied, then give him this” he said with unusual firmness, holding out the Meru oak sapling.
The funeral director looked at him in disbelief. “Are you mocking me?”
“No, I am very serious, this is the most expensive coffin in this workshop. Tell your client to plant it over his mother’s grave. It roots will fuse with the coffin and live on after us”
The director barked.
“You are an idiot?”
He looked at the sapling still in the coffinmaker’s hand and then at his face and realised that he was not going to budge.
“You will regret this. Take this nonsense out of my face” and he burst out of the workshop and stormed towards his car.
The coffinmaker’s wife watched, her husband holding the sapling and the director’s hand flailing in anger. When the director stormed toward his car, she bent back to her plants, potting new saplings, her hands holding the roots delicately.
The coffinmaker did not turn to watch the director leave. Instead, he placed the sapling gently on the windowsill. He would find a good spot to grow it. For now, he had work to do.
Picking his chisel, he walked towards the neglected cheap pine coffins.
P.S. This short story on the most expensive coffin is drawn from my reflections on the ones we lost and meditations on grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of insights drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.
by OP | Jul 23, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost
He disappeared. Last sighted headed for Tanzania and then he vanished without a trace. He was my first cousin, just two classes behind me in primary school. The family had already lost three sons when Nick disappeared. By this time, we were accustomed to mourning premature death, but this was different.
I remember asking his siblings the first few times, “Any news?” but not pressing for details. I could not even imagine how difficult it must have been for my aunt, what it meant not to have closure. To be left in a state of ambiguous loss and suspended grief. So we stopped asking, joined the collective conspiracy of silence because it seemed like the kind thing to do under the circumstances.
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