Mourning Held in a Capsule: A Dirge for My Beloved

 

This morning finds the silence both distinct and loud.

I step outside, and for the first time in days, the tent is no longer there. The gate stands still, no longer swinging open to the rhythm of visiting footsteps. The compound feels hollow, like something essential has been scooped out of it. Even the chicken houses seem unfamiliar—quiet, different, as though they too know she is gone.

The droves of people who once streamed in daily—friends, cousins, church members, strangers who somehow felt like family—are no longer coming. The chairs are folded. The cups are washed and packed away. The songs have stopped. The stories have paused.

And the compound is missing one vital element: Olive.

It is only now that I truly understand what people mean when they say mourning begins after the burial.

In the whirlwind of loss, the days before the burial are held in a kind of capsule. Time loses shape—morning bleeds into evening, hours into days, and conversations into moments. One gets swept into duty: planning, receiving visitors, coordinating meals, collecting memories. You wear your grief like a cloak you do not have time to inspect. You are present, but not still.

The outside world ceases to exist. You are caught in the sacred and suspended space of mourning, where each hug, each prayer, each plate of food passed across the table is part of a grand, unspoken ritual of collective grief.

But now, the tents are down. The people have left. The rituals are over.

We woke up this morning to visit the grave site. Weird, right?
It is almost like she will rise up from the dead.
My goodness.

And now... it begins. The silence. The absence. The pain that seeps in after the noise dies down. The finality settles—not with the last shovel of soil, but with the quiet that follows it.

That is when mourning truly begins.

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Olive,
you are no longer where we can see you,
but everywhere our hearts can feel.
You were the light in the laughter,
the warmth in our mornings,
the voice in our kitchen stories.
Now, you are the ache in the quiet—
a name whispered in the stillness,
a presence held in memory’s most tender space.

Rest gently. We carry you forward.

Njeri.