Crying with my Grandmother on my Mother’s Bed

Last Tuesday I cried on my mother’s bed, after she told me a story about my grandmother.

I’ve only met my grandmother once before. My mother took me to Nigeria to meet her when I was a baby.

I don’t remember the trip at all, but I do remember my grandmother’s death. I was nine years old at the time.

I’m sitting in the living room of our house late one evening, when I hear a strange sound swelling up from the basement.

I get up and slowly approach the doorway to investigate the sound. I get to the top of the staircase, and start walking down slowly.

Soon as I’m low enough to do so, I peak my head below the ceiling, and I see my mother slumped over her desk.

Her hands are covering her face, and tears are streaming through her fingertips. She’s sobbing loudly, and her chest is convulsing back in forth in violent contractions.

It’s my first time in life seeing someone struck with such profound grief, and it terrifies me.

Sometimes, when I reflect on this memory, I imagine myself rushing down the stairs to console her.

I wrap my arm around her back, place her head on my shoulder, and I let her cry into my shirt while I hold her tightly and soothe her with gentle rocking.

I truly wish I had done this, but I didn’t.

Soon as I saw my mother crying, I freaked out, and I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. I ran all the way back to my bedroom, and I closed the door shut, and I hoped my mom hadn’t noticed me.

To this day, I feel shame when I think back on this memory.

Now I’m 31, and I’m sitting in my mother’s bedroom while she tells me her own story of shame.

My mother left Nigeria in 1980 to follow her new American husband (my dad) to his homeland. My grandmother wasn’t happy about her youngest daughter running off with a foreigner, but she accepted it nonetheless.

My mother made a point to visit Nigeria once a year to see my grandmother. And once my mother established her financial independence, she started sending money to my grandmother each month to help with her expenses.

My mother has always adored my grandmother. Since I was a kid, she’s told me countless stories about her. She was always proud of the fact that she was able to provide my grandmother with financial support in her final years.

She wasn’t, however, proud of the way she acted with the last time she visited my grandmother’s house in Nigeria.

It was 1996, and my mother was frustrated her entire stay with my grandmother. My mother grew up with a house filled with relatives, but now the only people staying with my grandmother were distant cousins, and my mother found out they were stealing from my grandmother.

My mother told my grandmother to kick them out, but my grandmother refused to do so. Even if they were thieves, they were family, and my grandmother would never cast out one of her own to the streets.

One day, my mother discovered these cousins stealing her own belongings, and this sent her over the edge.

She called a cab, angrily packed her bags, and stormed out of the house in a fury.

It wasn’t until the cab started driving away that she looked back. When she did, she saw my grandmother standing in front of the house with a look of deep sadness.

As my mother tells me this story, her eyes start to well up.

“I’ll never forget the way she looked,” she tells me, “It was the last time I saw her alive…”

This wasn’t my first time hearing this story. My mother is a great storyteller, and there are few things I treasure more in life than the time I get to spend alone with my mother, listening quietly to her stories.

As I sat there on her bed, I thought we had come to the end of our story time, but then she continued to tell me a story about my grandmother that I’ve never heard before.

When she was young, my grandmother left her village to follow her new husband (my grandfather) to the capital. My great-grandmother wasn’t happy about her youngest daughter running off with a city-dweller, but she accepted it nonetheless.

My grandmother made a point to visit her village periodically to see my grandmother. When she did, she always brought western medicines back for her and everyone else in the village.

One time, my grandmother had to postpone her trip, and she couldn’t make her medicine trip to the village until a few days later than usual.

When she arrived to the village, she discovered her mother had died from dysentery the night before. It had been a while since my grandmother’s last visit, and they didn’t have any more medicine to save her.

My grandmother was a day too late.

At this point in the story, I suddenly erupt into uncontrollable sobbing.

My mother hasn’t seen my cry like this since I was a child, and she’s taken aback.

“What’s wrong, dear?”

The story brought up a terrible memory in me.

Last year on Thanksgiving day, while laying alone in my bed in Lisbon, Portugal, I saw my mother had just texted me.

I had plans for the morning, but I slept in past my alarm and messed them up, and I was feeling demotivated about that.

When I checked my phone, I saw that I had a dozen unread WhatsApp threads, including a recent one from my mother.

At first, I put the phone down and closed my eyes to go back to sleep, telling myself I’d respond later.

But my mom’s text stuck in my head.

At the time, I was making a concerted effort to be more attentive to my parents.

I left America 10 years ago to travel the world, and my mother was never too happy about me always being so far away. But she accepted it nonetheless.

I’ve made a point to visit home a few times a year, and I’ve always felt guilty about this.

With that guilt in mind, I decided to pick the phone back up and read my mom’s message:

“Idahosa, please pray for me”

My mom often asks me to pray for others, but she never asks me to pray for her.

This struck me as odd, and when I looked at the time the message was sent, I realized it would have been 4am in her time, when she should have still been asleep.

Sensing something was wrong, I called my mom directly.

She picks up the phone and tells me she’s fine, but her voice sounds strange. I ask her what’s wrong, and she starts to speak, but she can’t seem to finish her sentence.

Worried, I tell her to get out of bed and go wake up my cousin. She follows my instructions, and after several excruciating moments, my cousin finally gets on the line.

I ask him to tell me how my mom looks, and he tells me that, after giving him the phone, she slumped down to the ground and laid prostrate on the ground.

I tell him to call 911, and minutes later she’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

As it turns, out, she had a stroke the afternoon prior, but she didn’t realize what it was, and she thought she could just sleep it off.

She woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible feeling, and texted several people to pray for her, including me.

Since I was the only person awake, I was the only one who saw her message in time. Had I decided to sleep in longer, or had I decided to delay in checking my mom’s message, she probably would have died.

The thought terrifies me.

I hadn’t thought about that moment in months, and my grandmothers tragic story brought it up for me again.

I explained all this to my mom, and she rushed over to my side to console me, the same way I wish I had consoled her that day I saw her crying about her own mother.

I calmed down a bit, and she told me another story about my grandmother I’d never heard before.

For many years, my grandmother was so plagued with guilt about her mother that she stopped speaking her name. The memory was too painful for her.

Seeing this as a kid, my mother always felt sad about this. She felt my grandmother’s pain, and she always wished she could make her feel better.

So when she was pregnant with me, she had an idea.

It’s less than a year after my birth, and my mom takes me to Nigeria to meet my grandmother for the first and only time.

We arrive to my grandmother’s house, and my mother shows me to her.

Seeing my face, my grandmother lights up with joy, as any woman would seeing her newborn grandchild for the first time.

She asks my mother — “He’s beautiful! What did you name him?”

While my grandmother plays with me, my mother responds to her question — “His name is Idahosa.”

Suddenly, my grandmother stops playing, and looks up at my mother in shock. Her eyes fill with tears, then a smile slowly dawns on her face.

She looks back down at me lovingly and nods her head slowly:

“Idahosa….Idahosa” she says softly, “Yes…Idahosa, welcome home my child.”

“Idahosa” was the name of my grandmother’s mother.

My mother gave me that name as a gift to her own mother. She wanted my grandmother to start saying her mother’s name again, but to say it with joy instead of just shame.

I think this was a beautiful gift, and I’m proud to have been able to give this joy to my grandmother.

In that moment when I cried on my mother’s bed, I felt my grandmother’s sorrow and shame, and my mother’s sorrow and shame, and my own sorrow and shame.

But now that I know our full story, I feel all of our joy as well.