Popular Nigerian writer and novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has taken to social media to pen a lovely tribute to her father who kicked the bucket on June 10.
In the tribute shared to her Facebook page, the author wrote that her father, Professor James Nwoye Adiche, who died at the age of 88 remains an inestimable jewel in her life.
The novelist spoke about how she felt the pain of losing someone who had been there for the most part of her life and how she would forever miss him.
Chimamanda wrote “And just like that my life has changed forever. June 7, there was Daddy on our weekly family zoom call, talking and laughing. June 8, he felt unwell. Still, when we spoke he was more concerned about my concussion (I’d fallen while playing with my daughter).
“June 9, we spoke briefly, my brother Okey with him. “Ka chi fo,” he said. His last words to me. June 10, he was gone.
“Because I loved my father so much, so fiercely, so tenderly, I always at the back of my mind feared this day. But he was in good health. I thought we had time. I thought it wasn’t yet time. I have come undone. I have screamed, shouted, rolled on the floor, pounded things. I have shut down parts of myself.
“The children and I adore him,” my mother wrote in a tribute when he was made professor emeritus. We are broken. We are bereft, holding on to one another, planning a burial in these COVID-scarred times. I am stuck in the US, waiting. The Nigerian airports are closed. Everything is confusing, uncertain, bewildering.
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Still writing, Chimamanda enthused about pain and grief, “Sleep is the only respite. On waking, the enormity, the finality, strikes – I will never see my father again. Never again. I crash and go under. The urge to run and run, to hide from this. The shallow surface of my mind feels safest because to go deeper is to face unbearable pain. All the tomorrows without him, his wisdom, his grace.