I bought this novel by Ghanaian author Nii Ayikwei Parkes as an e-book while I was in iso with Covid in Ghana in 2022 and had finished all my hard-copy books. It would have been the ideal place to read it because I could have got immediate explanations and translations from my Ghanaian in-laws, but I couldn’t get the download to open.
Even once I was back in Australia, it took a few weeks to get the download sorted and by then I had lost momentum and no need for e-books. But finally, I have read it! And perhaps being at home is a better place to read the book after all, because it immersed me in the sights and smells and sounds of Ghana which I enjoyed a lot, after more than a year’s absence from a country that is in some ways my second home.
Tail of the Blue Bird is told from two perspectives, alternating between the voice of Opanyin (elder) Poku, a hunter and storyteller living in the small, traditional village of Sonokrom, and the third-person narrative of the experiences of Kayo Odamtten, a young Ghanaian man who trained and worked as a forensic doctor in the UK. On returning to Ghana Kayo has had to settle for working as a lab manager: the local police have no interest in employing a forensic scientist.
I listened to a lot of music after Kwajo died. In the car, it was Soukous, dance music of the Congo. Mainly only two CDs, over and over: Soukous masters Papa Wemba and Kanda Bongo Man. Almost 10 weeks of non-stop Soukous.
Kanda Bongo Man performs at Paddington Town Hall in late 1980s. Pic by my friend Carlotta. Video link at the end of this post.
One of the best tracks on the Kanda Bongo Man CD, Dyna, has a jump in it, just as the melody starts to take off. The first few times I played the CD, I clicked to the next track, but after a while I let it go and after a few bumps, the exultant, joyous guitar races onward, lifting my mood and giving me the strength to keep moving forward.
It was a bright winter day when I went to Maroubra beach a few weeks after my beautiful son took his own life, back in 2019. The waves rolled in long and wide, breaking with huge plumes of spray. I hadn’t realised how sad I would feel, this first time at a place that held so many good memories. I walked the length of it with a friend, tears pouring down my cheeks as I visualised an alternate, happier universe where he was skimming the breakers while I walked the golden sand. I imagined that was him out there on the waves, a lithe dark shape soaring across the bottomless blues of sea and sky.
July 2019. A magnolia bush near my home is in flower. It seems unseasonably early, but I figure that’s because it gets full sun in the afternoon. These magnolias have no perfume, but I love their beautiful waxy flowers. I love the pink and white against winter’s blue skies. I love the slow unfurling, promise of beauty to come.
I take a photo, just days before Kwajo dies.
Everywhere, through the long hours and days and weeks that follow his death, I see flowers. More magnolias. The first fragrant fluffs of wattle. My workmates send a massive arrangement in vintage tones: cream carnations with dusky pink centres, rusty callistemon and waratah, blue-grey baby eucalyptus leaves. Other flowers arrive, I don’t even remember who sends them. Vases cover all the surfaces in the lounge room at the place I’m staying (friends have opened their doors to me; home is too painful a place to be). I love them all. I deeply appreciate these expressions of love, kindness, care. I immerse myself in their colours and scent.
Flowers are a filter through which I can look at the brutal awfulness of what has happened without being consumed by the pain. My son’s suicide is devastating. I want to turn my back on it all and run without stopping until I can find a universe where he still exists. But I can’t. Somehow, I keep functioning. I walk deliberately, slowly. I breathe deep. I make decisions. I try and return all the love that’s coming my way. I photograph my flowers.
The day before the funeral I rope in a friend to hunt for flowers. We get to the markets too late even for coffee – rookie mistake – and instead have to scout the florists of Bankstown. We find a wonderful tall white spikey arrangement and order two. Kwajo could be very spikey, and the soft white blooms offer some sense of tranquility amid this storm.
We’re also seeking single stems for people to place on the coffin or in the grave. I’m looking for daffodils or freesias, but it’s too early in the season. The bright yellow of daffodils is so hopeful and joyful. When pregnant with Kwajo I bought a fluffy yellow towel to wrap my baby in. Kwajo at his best was as vibrant and full of life as daffys.
Lindy buys armfuls of pink and purple gerberas. I find sweet-smelling jonquils. Together they’re perfect. As a small child, Kwajo’s favourite colour was pink, and as a young man he loved to shock people by wearing ‘girl’s colours’. Some people thought he was gay, but he wasn’t, he was just confident and bold, not afraid of peoples’ opinions.
I’m still worried we won’t have enough single stems and put out a call to a few friends to bring more to the funeral. I want his grave to be filled with flowers. I want my boy to be covered in petals and pollen. If some far future archaeologist finds Kwajo’s grave thousands of years from now, they will find the evidence of flowers and be reminded that love is eternal.
On the day, there are enough flowers for everyone at the burial to throw one in the grave along with their scoop of sand. It is beautiful.
Afterwards, when most people have gone back to the hall for refreshments, someone’s preschooler is curious about the grave. We lie on the grass to look safely over the edge and talk about the flowers. I say they show how much everyone loved Kwajo. My eyes are dry. I’m so full of love I’m almost happy. It’s one of many precious moments on this day that I will always remember.
The next morning, I wake with an impulse to visit the grave. Just me. The pile of coarse clayey soil is covered with flowers. I go so early there’s still dew on them. There’s one of the spikey funeral arrangements, a massive white bouquet left by a family we were friends with when he was small, and a posy of white lilies and grevilleas, loosely gathered by a pale pink ribbon. It’s several weeks before I find out who left the posy. It turns out to be from the garden of a friend from my university days who I haven’t seen for years. So many people like her came to the funeral, showing love and support and bearing witness. It was overwhelming, and I am so thankful for their presence.
August 2019. Graves are the norm for the Ghanaian side of the family but on my side, no-one has been buried for several generations. Visiting a grave is new for me, but it helps my grief.
August is the month that I start developing this new grave-visiting routine, which over the months ahead develops as follows:
I buy the flowers at the flower shop on the way into Rookwood cemetery – whatever is reasonably cheap and makes me think of Kwajo.
At the grave, I tidy up the remains of the previous lot of flowers. Sometimes I leave them scattered over the grave to blow away or rot into the soil. I like the symbolism of it.
I take photos of the old and new flowers. I document the flowers’ decay. Focusing on impermanence is helpful in some way I haven’t yet figured out.
Sometimes I cry, but usually my routine is very calming. I listen to the wind and the ravens, check out other graves, sit and reflect.
In August, I visit my brothers. I briefly retreat into worlds where Kwajo’s death seems less real and I can focus on the moment: wattles blooming among the snow on Mount Canobolas, canola flowering across the central western slopes, scarlet honeyeaters feeding on grass tree nectar in the north. They remind me of the beauty in the world, of reasons to keep moving, to find ways of living with my grief. I forget all pain in the moment of focusing on nature through my camera.
Each time, I rush back after a few days. I am consumed by an urgency to return to Kwajo’s grave, still so fresh. Anxiety pushes me forward across the mountains toward Rookwood. I hunch over the wheel, afraid it will be closed. I arrive in the golden late afternoon to find the mound of grave soil has subsided and stick daffodils and jonquils in plastic water bottles at his feet.
September 2019. Spring has well and truly arrived. I buy poppies for the home where I’m staying, and creamy daffodils and jonquils for Kwajo’s grave. I love their perfume. Pale purple wisteria flowers along the river, where I walk most days.
In the spirit of renewal, I prepare to reinvent my apartment. I invite Kwajo’s friends and brothers to come and help re-home his stuff. They discover their own clothes in the piles on the table. We spend the day laughing and crying and telling stories. Some of Kwajo’s school friends bring a pot of spikey white native orchids. I give them one of the picture books he loved as a child (Ten in the bed) for their toddler. Other, more recent friends arrive late in the day with more orchids, colourful hothouse ones that later brighten the bathroom at my home away from home.
A few days later, I feel driven to visit his grave again, but end up deciding that my time is better spent focusing on the present. I bake a cake for his youngest brother’s birthday. Recovery isn’t all about graves and flowers. I decide that baking the family’s favourite passionfruit cake is an investment in our present and future. It’s about love and making new memories. Writing in my journal that night, I list the things I’m grateful for. Kwajo’s dad, step-mum and siblings top the list.
October 2019. This month, I start taking other people with me to visit Kwajo’s grave. I upgrade from plastic water bottles to spike vases, to accommodate the extra flowers. We take yellow freesias, orange ranunculus. I continue taking photos of the flowers’ decline. The ranunculus are pretty even when wilted. As the heat sets in, watering the plot becomes part of the grave visiting routine. The grass is patchy and brown. This is not symbolically good; I need it to grow!
On my walks I see fragile mauve iris that remind me of my childhood.
Friends help me repaint my place and refurnish Kwajo’s room. I start experimenting with moving back home. I stay a night or two at a time. It works better with friends there. I spend hundreds of dollars on pots and indoor plants. This feels necessary. I need to fill the space with life and growth and greenery to help cancel out the bad memories. I also buy a steampunk skull. There’s a de facto shrine now, on the cupboard where Kwajo used to leave his keys: skull and roses.
November 2019. I come down with my second head cold since Kwajo’s death. I abandon the plan to move back home and recline on my friends’ lounge, overlooking the Cooks River Valley, and watch the jacaranda flowers emerge. But they are barely noticeable against the smoky skies. It’s not yet the ‘Black Summer’ of 2019–20, but the news from the north is bad and every morning we wake to the smell of smoke. Illness stops me visiting the grave. The only time I go, I take native flowers that might survive the heat a little longer than more fragile flowers.
Kwajo’s friends help me clear my garage. It’s full of his half finished projects, obscure equipment. We record it all in one of the condolence books.
December 2019. It’s Ghanaian tradition to visit the grave at Christmas. We go a few days before, with everlasting daisies. We burn incense, Kwajo’s step mum leads prayers, and his Dad and I say a few words. I talk about how he brought us together. His dad says: ‘Kwajo, we will never forget you’. We water his grave. It’s looking pretty good considering the drought. His neighbours also benefit from our care. Another Ghanaian (a family friend) rests a few plots away so we water him too.
I’m living fully back at home now, with an old friend from overseas filling the empty space of Kwajo’s room for a couple of weeks. His calm presence helps me settle. I put a peace lily in his room that someone gave me at the funeral. I don’t remember who it was, but the plant flourishes.
I buy Australian native flowers for Christmas Day. The family and I decide to celebrate Christmas at my place, as we have the past two years. Keeping up our traditions holds us together. It’s a joyful day. The family gives me a framed portrait of Kwajo. It’s photoshopped with our names, a dove, the rocket a friend made for him to take in his coffin, and a purple gerbera. I add it to the shrine.
January 2020. A friend’s daughter is visiting from Europe and takes over from my previous guest to occupy Kwajo’s room. We sew wraps for baby bats orphaned during the horror summer and do yoga together. By the time she leaves, it feels safe to be home. Alia and Kwajo grew up together and she sent beautiful words for his funeral. With her mum and brother and his family, we visit the grave, taking gerberas, sunflowers and everlasting daisies.
February 2020. February is a difficult month. I can’t find any record of the flowers I kept at home, or whether I went to the cemetery. I struggle at work. Human Resources is still messing me about with my pay and my leave. Management are pressing down on me with unreasonable deadlines. At home, I’m mostly on my own, with friends staying over just a couple of nights a week. The nights I’m alone are ok at first, but after the initial calm comes despair.
In my journal I write about my problem with the concept of resilience. That it sounds like something bouncy and positive, but in reality, what it takes to get through this nightmare of loss and grief is just the sheer determination to keep going. Being ‘resilient’ feels like crawling uphill over broken glass. Up a long, steep, harsh road with every part of you in pain. You keep going because maybe the view from the top – or at a distant curve in the road – will be just a little better than what you’re feeling right now. You keep going because occasionally, on that long, slow crawl, you see tiny flowers poking through the shards of glass. They are signs that it’s worth continuing, that it won’t always feel this bad. I visualise them as star-shaped, bright orange and yellow.
Alia’s brother becomes a dad. I take his partner shopping for fabric and patterns a few days before their daughter is born. She chooses bright colours, floral prints, exactly what I love. On good days, I sew watermelon pants and a wattle dress for the baby.
March 2020. My niece visits from the US. By sheer luck she is here just days before Australia goes into COVID lockdown. It was hard not having her here when Kwajo died and she also suffered being so far away from me. She stays a few days. It’s such a relief to spend time with her. She’s so close to me in age we are like sisters. We talk and walk along the river and look at old – like ancestral sepia old – family photos. Hoping COVID will soon be brought under control, we plan a holiday together. She finds an old school photo of Kwajo and insists that I put it on display. I find it hard to look at his face, but eventually I put it n the sideboard.
We take pretty purple flowers and multi-hued everlastings to the grave. At home, I have peach gerberas and white carnations. Gifts from her daughters – a painted postcard and champagne gummy bears – are added to the Kwajo shrine (he liked gummy bears!).
April 2020. A positive side of COVID is that it brings an expat friend back from overseas and permanently into Kwajo’s room. Well, as permanently as anything can be right now; he’ll return home eventually. Despite the chaos in the world, this brings more stability for me. Regular meals, someone to chat to at breakfast or dinner. Someone to appreciate my baking and my sunny balcony.
I’m completely in the habit of buying flowers for home now, and the oriental lilies are spectacular. Flamboyant as my son, but sweeter smelling. At the cemetery, cooler weather means a return to softer flowers. There’s not a big range at the flower shop but I’m okay with that, the orange gerberas are still gorgeous.
I ride my bike a lot in April and everywhere I go, there are flowers – morning glory, roses, marigolds… Sydney in autumn is almost as colourful as Sydney in spring.
May 2020. My birthday – and Kwajo’s Dads’. It’s a big one for both of us, although different decades. I’d rather not know about it but as with Christmas, with a bit of planning it goes ok. Low key meals with close friends, more gifts than I would ever normally receive. I feel cherished.
It’s also Mother’s Day. The kids give me a rainbow box of flowers. Rookwood is crazy that day. I go to the cemetery with Kwajo’s best friend and by the time we get there, the only flowers (other than carnations, which I’m not wild about) are strange pink and purple bobbles. We look at each other, shrug, and decide that really, these odd blooms are soooo Kwajo: prickly, quirky and exactly the colours he liked.
Everyone who visits the grave has their own idea of what flowers to take. We’re all drawn to different colours and shapes that represent Kwajo’s character or bring special moments to mind. I think gerberas remind the family of the extraordinary gathering of love that was his funeral, and daffodils remind me of the hope that brought him into the world.
June 2020. Kwajo’s birthday. He would have been 26. I take time off work. I plan to organise catch-ups with friends to look at photos and reminisce, but only manage to do it once.
The family plan to go to the cemetery but I feel sick and have the COVID test, so they have to do it without me. (The result is negative). I’m self-isolating so with time on my hands, I create a Facebook memorial and spend his birthday sharing pics and looking at what other people post. Others message or call. I don’t feel alone. It’s a peaceful day.
When I visit the grave with friends a few days later, I find the family have left gerberas. We add more gerberas, dahlias, roses.
At home, the lilies are still going strong. In the streets, the magnolia up the road from my place is already blooming. Along the river, a succulent with bell-like orange flowers and stripy reptilian stalk contrasts with the muddy water. It flowers all winter. I take a cutting for my growing succulent collection.
July 2020. First anniversary. Due to COVID, we can’t do the traditional Ghanaian one-year celebration that we had planned. We are also still waiting for the cemetery to complete Kwajo’s headstone. I feel paralysed. I manage to organise two small visits: one with some of my friends, and one with some of Kwajo’s friends. Each time, we sit and talk. We laugh, cry, share outrageous memories. Because he was outrageous. Annoying, unpredictable, creative, brilliant, affectionate, wild. He made friends with everyone. He was generous and smart … and outrageous.
On the day that I go with Kwajo’s friends, his grave is flooded. One of them notices that two plots up – on dry, level ground – the headstone reads: Lorraine May Flood. We find this hilarious: she has flooded all over Dave (military gent next door) and Kwajo.
We burn incense and pour drinks into the grave. We eat the champagne gummy bears his cousin had sent me months before and leave Kwajo once again covered in flowers: iris, gerberas, daffodils, orchids, dahlias, chrysanthemum daisies. We leave the remaining gummy bears for him too.
A few days later, another friend visits the grave. She sends me a photo of the flowers they left, and that is how I find out that the inscription is finished. It takes another couple of weeks before the cemetery informs me, and it’s several weeks after that before they add the photo.
I take six months leave from work. There’s too much change, too much pressure. I think I pushed myself too hard, in those early months, to ‘get back to normal’. I need to rest.
I try and find the words to write about my grief. I hesitate to say that I’m ‘recovering’ or ‘healing’, one year on, because these words seem to imply an end point where everything is ok, back to normal, 100% happy – and I don’t know if that is possible, or even desirable. This sadness will always be with me. Scar tissue, while serviceable, can be tough and scaly. I think I prefer ‘rebuild’. With time, maybe, I’ll rebuild a life of value around the gaping hole of my loss. I guess that’s what I’ve been doing this past year, moment by moment, flower by flower: rebuilding.
August to October 2020. I walk a lot these days. It calms and refreshes me. I breath deep and take in the world around me. It gives me a sense of purpose. I have many walking projects: Harbour to Hawkesbury, the Coast Track, all the Blue Mountains walks I haven’t been on for years. In October, I add my steps to my walking log to raise money for mental health resources and research.
This spring there are masses of flowers in the bush and I rue my ignorance of what they’re called. The ones I know include hardenbergia, dillwynia, native fuchsia, boronia. One day I even see a young waratah. The trees drip with blossom and hum with insects. Everywhere, even in the burned bush, colour and life burst through.
My walks include a couple to Rookwood, which I can reach from my home, walking most of the way beside the Cooks River. I take jonquils and daffodils – ten-dollar bunches that are as bright and beautiful as my boy. The first time, ravens gather around me as I sit on the grass eating my lunch. There must be ten of them, all ages and sizes. I give them half my sandwich, broken in pieces. One has only half a beak, I don’t know how it can eat. Another jumps onto the headstone and pulls all the jonquils out of the built-in vase so that it can drink the water. When I share this on Facebook some people exclaim that it must be Kwajo’s spirit, but I think it’s just a thirsty bird. Another raven steals what’s left of the gummy bears. Perhaps that’s him?
The second time I walk there, I find that Kwajo’s photo has finally been added to the headstone. The tears start as soon as I glimpse it from a few metres away. It’s perfect. I take photos and share to his dad, his siblings, friends and family. His face is shaded with daffodils and the dark granite reflects a cloudy sky.
Finally, in early October our small family gathers at the graveside for a much reduced one-year celebration. We bring pink and white gerberas and chrysanthemums. We eat chicken skewers, which he would have approved of, and apple malt, which for him was acceptable but not as good as the original malt (a kind of non-alcoholic Guinness, blech!). One of his brothers pours a bottle of it into the grave. The drought has broken now, so this is all the watering he needs.
We talk about things we miss about Kwajo (like his spontaneity and playfulness) and things we don’t miss (like his messiness and his driving). His best friend Boo is with us and makes us laugh with his stories. We do the usual ritual of burning incense but when I’m arranging the flowers a stick of it burns my palm. We all agree that this is Kwajo up to mischief.
It’s been a long, hard year (and a bit). The hardest year of my life, without a doubt. But I can mark out, in flowers, the moments and the actions and the people that have made it bearable. Thank you.
It’s almost seven weeks since my son Kwajo died, but I knew within a few days that I would speak at his funeral. I also knew what I wanted to say. As time passes, it is becoming easier to think about the kind of person Kwajo was and remember his good qualities, but at the time I was overwhelmed by the pain not only of his death, but of the struggle we had been through as a family during the preceding 20 months of his severe depression.
It was hard to think about the things I loved about Kwajo and write a regular eulogy that described and celebrated his life. Instead, I was driven by the need to help everyone who loved him, including myself, to remember that suicide is not the only way out of emotional pain. Suicide can trigger other suicides, and I don’t want anyone to die because he did.
I also wanted to share some of the values that kept me going throughout Kwajo’s depression and in the days following his death. I wanted people to be able to grieve in a way that would help them live bigger, stronger, fuller lives.
My official role was to give thanks to everyone for attending the funeral and for supporting us. I drafted what I wanted to say and ran it past Kwajo’s dad, step-mum and siblings to make sure they were happy with it. They were.
When I stood up to deliver my speech, I turned to look at the room and was overwhelmed. A sea of over 300 people, lining the walls and spilling out into the yard. Kwajo’s friends, schoolmates from as far back as kindergarten and their families. His workmates and fellow students. My brothers and other family members. Family friends and church members from the Ghanaian community. People I work with, neighbours. Friends that I hadn’t seen for years as well as those close to me, who had been supporting me through Kwajo’s depression and the immediate trauma of losing him.
So of course, being me, I went off script for a while. The gist of it was that this amazing turn out reflected what an awesome person Kwajo was, and was a credit to us all. This wonderfully diverse bunch of people — people of many races, cultures, faiths, of diverse ages, sexualities and abilities, brought together by the death of a brilliant, charismatic young mixed race man — represented the very best of what Australia could be. The gathering demonstrated all the values that I was about to talk about in my prepared speech. I clapped. I asked them to applaud themselves, and they did.
After my spontaneous outburst, I did return to the script. The words I’ve shared below are based on what I had prepared, but I’ve added some of the other things I said plus a few things I would have said if I’d thought of them in time.
Words for those grieving at Kwajo’s funeral
Love,
connection, hope, forgiveness and gratitude. These are the values that will strengthen
us and enable us to support one another.
Today is all about love. I want you to look around you and feel the love that is in this room. Since Kwajo died, his dad, step-mum, siblings and I have been surrounded and supported by love. I call it love immersion therapy.
Kwajo loved us. And when he was well, he knew how much he was loved. I believe that he didn’t want to hurt us, that night he died. But he was in more pain than he could bear and he wasn’t able to understand how much it would hurt us to lose him.
Love was not enough to save his life. But I hope and believe it will be enough to help all of us get through this difficult time of missing and grieving for him. The love of our families and friends and communities, and the love of people we meet for the first time today, because of Kwajo.
Always remember that you are loved. Always remember how much love you have to give.
With the World’s Best Uncle and baby Abrantie
Love is closely related to connection. Kwajo was a great connector. He always remembered people’s names and was always making new friends. He saw countless opportunities to connect ideas, people, things. This crowd is evidence of how connected Kwajo was. We are such a diverse bunch of people, here in this room, brought together by our love for him and his family and friends, and by our wish to support and care for each other. We are connected across all our differences.
Hold onto those connections. Value and build them. Keep reaching out to each other. Be generous — if you think someone is troubled, reach out to them, connect. Be hopeful — especially in your darkest moments, don’t give up. Keep trying, someone will be there for you. I wish Kwajo had realised the strength of the connections he had, and called just one more person on the night he died — maybe he would still be with us.
Scary times at the Grand Canyon. That devilish smile.
Which brings me to hope. We passionately, desperately hoped that Kwajo would win his battle with depression, but he did not. So what can we hope for, now that the worst has happened?
I hope that the ripples from Kwajo’s death will be more positive than negative. Of course I don’t mean his death was a good thing, but I believe that even in the wreckage of it, we can find the tools and the means to build ourselves better lives.
I hope that we can all learn from this experience. I hope that we can learn how to make Australia a safer place, so that people like Kwajo don’t lose hope and instead can heal and lead happy, satisfying lives.
I hope that we can all grieve for Kwajo in ways that are emotionally healthy so that we continue to grow and flourish as humans should, instead of being damaged or destroyed by our loss.
I hope that you will remember Kwajo’s creativity and confidence and be inspired. One of his employers emailed to tell me that they couldn’t come to the funeral because their staff would all be busy teaching kids computer programming — including a robotics/internet of things course that Kwajo had developed. Right now, students in those classes are benefiting from Kwajo’s legacy. I hope they go on to achieve great things for our world.
And we all hope that Kwajo is now at peace. For those of us with religious faith, we hope he is in heaven; for those of us without, perhaps, like me you can hope he is zooming around the multiverse, joyfully disrupting the very fabric of reality. Either way, he is no longer suffering.
Forgiveness – I know many of us in the room are asking ourselves why Kwajo did this, what we could have done to help him. Maybe we’re angry, with him, with ourselves. Anger is a common part of grief. As is regret. I know I can’t help wondering, what if I had done this or that differently … would he still be here? There is no point in going down the rough roads of anger and regret. It won’t help. Instead I ask you all to forgive Kwajo, forgive each other, and forgive yourselves.
It’s not easy to do this — I struggle with forgiving myself for all the things I wish I’d done differently as a parent — but it will not bring him back. Those of us who were closest to Kwajo did everything we could to help him get better and keep him with us. We must keep remembering that and be gentle with ourselves and each other.
For years before Kwajo died, I have been practising gratitude. During his depression, it helped me cope to spend time focusing on what I was grateful for. It continues to help me now he’s gone.
I am grateful for the feel of the winter wind on my skin and the warmth of the sun on my face. I am grateful for the gloomy days that bring essential rain.
I am grateful for the colourful, elusive birds that distract me from my grief, as I try to spot and photograph them.
I am grateful for my lively, noisy, generous Ghanaian family; for my loving, kind, pragmatic brothers; and for my inspiring friends and overlapping communities, all of whom have made this time more bearable.
I am grateful for good health and for being alive. Life is good.
Never miss an opportunity to enjoy life.
The past 20 months have been so challenging that it’s hard for me to remember the good times, but the stories people have been telling me since Kwajo died have reminded me of all his wonderful qualities: his exuberance, his cleverness, his sweetness, his belief that people should treat each other well, his wild and wicked sense of humour, his ability to do backflips, his channelling of Ananse, the trickster of Ghanaian folklore … I am grateful for this. I’ve been reminded that we can all be grateful to have had Kwajo in our lives, even though he wasn’t with us for very long. It was a dynamic 25 years.
On behalf of Kwajo’s family, I thank you all for the love and support you have given us. We feel cherished and we are grateful.
Thank you
for coming today to share our grief and our celebration. It means a lot.
Thank you to everyone who helped us organise the funeral — more people than I dare to name, in case I forget someone. We are grateful to you for managing this massive project, driving us around, negotiating with the priest (his first Ghanaian funeral, yikes!), funeral directors and Rookwood cemetery, designing the invitation and the program, compiling the slideshow, listening to us cry, MC’ing, and organising the many things that needed organising, such as:
the keyboard player, sound system, recording and DJ
Thank you to everyone who has hugged and consoled us, sent messages, cards and flowers, given me places to stay while my home remains too a sad place to be, gave financial contributions for the funeral, and brought us jollof rice and fish stew, cartons of soft drinks and water (the Ghanaians), or cakes and fruit (the non-Ghanaians).
We are grateful to everyone who has helped make this big fat Ghanaian funeral the send off that Kwajo deserves: bold, slightly chaotic, full of love and unforgettable.
Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
My beautiful son — known as Action Man, or AM, on this blog — lost his battle with depression on 14 July. He is at peace.
If you are attending the funeral, download the order of service, which also has the burial location (note: the PDF is laid out for print – follow the page numbers.
I startled the Nankeen night heron on my morning walk. I recognised it by its cinnamon wings. It flew away into the mangroves on the other side of the river. It was too quick for a photo, but a day or two later I saw it again at dusk.
Nankeen night heron – Nycticorax caledonicus.
The night heron is elusive. As it’s name suggests, it’s usually only seen at dusk and dawn. It hides among the mangroves during the day. Spotting it again so soon was a highlight of my evening walk along the Cooks River. Continue reading →
Border Crossings 