Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on grief and how language fails us

“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.”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I heartily recommend Adichie’s recent book Notes on Grief, which she wrote in response to the death of her father in the spring of 2020, when the world was shutting down amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Her dad died of kidney failure, not the virus, but the pandemic complicated things dramatically: Adichie could not travel at that time, and was trying to absorb the shock while isolated.

The book, which began as an essay Adichie wrote for The New Yorker later that year, is powerful. Having lost my own dad a couple of years ago, it resonated deeply; when she talks about how grief can affect the body, she was putting words to something I too have felt.