Notes on Absence

One only realizes the different notions of love in one’s life when they become absent. This doesn’t mean that one took the love in their life for granted while it was present. Rather, it’s the case that one simply never felt the need to worry about the presence of love when it was consistently there.

Earlier this year—in January, I received a message on WhatsApp. When the message came in, I was standing in front of the mirror in my room doing what has now become my morning ritual: Whenever I have no one around me, I wake up by 7 a.m. and listen to Dean Lewis’s ‘Be Alright’ and weep profusely at the perceived absence that now bestows my life. After Lewis’s song, I would then play Aretha Franklin’s ‘I Say a Little Prayer’ and imagine it was my mother, Olayemi, who is singing to me an adult-lullaby. I don’t know why I perform this ritual, but a tug in me seems to remind me that I am just embracing the absence that comes with my expat status, and the far-away love I could only wish for is proximate.  

Normally, I would feel energized after listening to Aretha’s song, but something kept me in front of the mirror that morning after Aretha stopped singing. The night before, Olayemi called me on WhatsApp. She said she misses me, and she understands that I have been busy with my doctoral studies. She said even though my busyness makes it look untrue, she knows that I love her. ‘I know you love me so much, my son,’ she said at the end of our call. That morning, I stood in front of the mirror looking at my own body while also thinking about my mother’s words. But it is not just the words that made my feet unmovable, it was the glance the words and the mirror created: the ‘who loves this body’ glance; the ‘I need my mother to hug me into oblivion’ glance; the ‘I want a mother’s care’ glance. The glance then creates a desire—a desire to have presence, the presence of someone. Someone who would erupt my tranquil coven...

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