Being My Own Anchor How Loss Renewed My Relationship With Home

After my dad’s death, home had seemed like a place I would drift further away from. It took some time but eventually I found my way back.

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Brooklyn, United States

There are a few steps of planning that go into getting ready for my yearly trip to Nigeria. This includes buying gifts for loved ones, examining my clothes to make sure I have at least one or two outfits my mom approves of, making sure I have all my work visa documents in order and withdrawing money to gift people. With COVID-19, travelling became even more precarious so I added more steps to the list. I made sure to get multiple tests and have enough copies of the results distributed across my bags to avoid complications.  

This year, my to-do list was almost complete except one thing. Besides seeing my family and attending my dad’s one-year memorial, I wanted to be unduly distracted. A few weeks prior to my trip, my boyfriend and I had broken up after three and a half years. We agreed it was the best thing but it was devastating. I knew I needed something more than my standard two-week routine in Nigeria to keep me occupied. From the time I left for school in 2013, whenever I made the yearly visit in December, I would mostly stay at home since I could not drive, did not have a sim card, a credit card, or the mental capacity to explain to my parents why an event started after sundown. Yet, 2021 was different. The universe had cursed my December, with the death of a parent and the demise of a relationship to grieve. I needed a coping strategy.  

I figured that the best way was to try out new things. So I sent a casual DM to an old friend who lived in Nigeria. I will refer to him as ‘S.’ ‘Old’ as a descriptor is true because I had known him for a while, although it was difficult to bring a memory of us to mind. Meanwhile, ‘friend’ was less true. He was an acquaintance, but one I had an inkling could be somewhat of a good time and I needed someone to distract me from the consuming sadness. He responded and our conversation flowed well. Like me, he was born in Nigeria and had lived on the US East Coast. At the time, he too was going through a breakup. We ran parallel conversations across Twitter and WhatsApp speaking about work, music, and books. We talked about our time in university and the places we had visited during the short school holidays. We took a quiz to test our knowledge of US States. I got 24 out of the 50. He got all the 50 states. He challenged me to do the state quiz for Nigeria but I declined. I knew I would score poorly. I could not remember the last time I looked at a map of the Nigerian states. I could barely remember the route from my house to school, church or the hairdresser. As I heard more about his life in Nigeria, I started to realize how I felt so disconnected from the place I had called home for more than half of my life...