Adébáyọ̀

If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.

You are deceiving me, abi?’ I followed him to the door, grappling for words to tell him I did not really want to fight with him, to explain that I was afraid that he would leave me and I would be all alone in the world again. ‘Akin, God will deceive you, I promise you. God will deceive you the way you are deceiving me.

OK, we’ll tell her you dug the grave.’ It’s the truth – stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?

I’d never been so happy to see another human being, wanted to strap her in the seat next to me, live with her in the car forever, never let her out of my sight again.

It is what wives do; I did it many times, do you remember? Did you even notice how hard I tried?

The wailing will start again and as you all watch the grave-diggers begin to fill up the grave with earth, even the men will become tearful. Couples who have not spoken to each other in weeks will hold hands. I was too shocked to cry at my father’s funeral, but you had tears in your eyes even though you did not let one of them fall.

...all the mess of love and life [that] only shows up as you go along.

Hope has always been my opium, the thing I couldn’t wean myself off. No matter how bad things got, I found a way to believe that even defeat was a sign that I was bound to win.

Anger is easier than shame.

But I think I did believe that love had immense power to unearth all that was good in us, refine us and reveal to us the better versions of ourselves.

I did not see him as someone who had changed, but as a man I had never known. I doubted the love I had once been so sure of and concluded that he had married me because he thought I was gullible.

But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I bit my tongue because I did not want to ask questions. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers.

It would take a while for me to realise that each of my children had given me as much as they took. My memories of them, bittersweet and constant, were as powerful as a physical presence.