On Grief i Never Fully Knew.

I have never truly experienced grief, not the kind that sits in your bones and rearranges your faith. Not the kind that hollows out your chest and changes the way sunlight feels. My family is alive. My parents were present for most of my life. My siblings are still breathing, still reachable by phone or a corridor away from me. And that, in a world like this, feels like a rare privilege.

But I think the earliest encounter I had with what I thought was grief was when my maternal step-grandmother, Hajiya Fati, passed away. I must have been three or four, too young to understand the weight of what was happening. I remember watching everyone cry. The air was heavy, the house filled with murmurs and sobs. I didn’t know what was going on, only that sadness had taken over the room. And so, I tried to fit in. I forced myself to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. So, innocently, I used my saliva to mimic the tears. Whenever I recall that moment, I can’t help but laugh. It was a child’s way of trying to belong to something she didn’t yet comprehend.

I never met my maternal grandfather either. I have no personal memories of him, yet somehow, through stories passed down, I still grieve. A quiet, nameless grief. One my soul has made room for, even without direct experience. It’s fascinating how the mind finds ways to mourn what the heart never touched.

But the first time I cried, like really cried for someone’s death, was Yusif. Then Aliyu. Two boys, two years apart. Two people who were once loud and living, now only accessible through memory.

It’s strange how death doesn’t always come with screaming or sobbing. Sometimes it just lingers quietly in your chest, like a cough you haven’t yet learned how to let out. Sometimes it looks like scrolling through old WhatsApp messages or standing too long over a voice note you forgot to delete. Sometimes it’s simply the way you pause when someone says their name, or how your memory edits itself to make room for a version of them that will never grow older.

Aliyu had a smile that made everyone forget their own problems. Yusif was stubborn in the way only kind-hearted boys can be gentle underneath all the noise. Both of them reminded me that youth is not a shield. That being good, or young, or beloved, does not guarantee a long life.

Allah yafu Yusuf Taha, Aliyu Abubakar, Hajiya Fati, Jaafaru Mairiga, Muhammad Attahiru, Ruqaiya Attahiru, Khalifa Jaafaru. Ameen.

Maybe grief isn’t always loud. Maybe it’s the quiet realization that you’ll never laugh with them again. That you’ll never get a text from them again or see them at a gathering, or in Amigo’s slush cue now 4u, or randomly run into them after Eid prayers at An-noor mosque. Maybe grief is the weight of knowing they were just here, and now they’re not.

And maybe that’s what makes grief so unfair. It’s not just about who we lose, but when. And how. And what we never got the chance to say before the curtain closed.

I still don’t know if I’ve truly grieved. But I carry them with me. In memory. In moments. In quiet.

And maybe, for now, that’s enough.