Reflections On The Ones We Lost - Oyunga Pala

Why I Wrote This Book.

This book is essentially a communal act of mourning, a collective ritual of remembrance. I return to my Kenyan public in humble service, after years of introspection. Writing about death and loss was not a choice; it was an inevitability. It was the only way for me to heal, and in doing so,I hope to create a space for others to find the strength to confront their own suppressed sorrows borne from loss. This book is not about giving answers, but about inviting my readers into a long overdue conversation, a public acknowledgment of our shared humanity in the face of death.

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The Grudge

While waiting for the hearse of their mutually affluent friend, two former classmates—one principled and judgmental, the other a disheveled confidant—unravel their cherished grievances about the deceased, only to discover the lonely and paranoid man hidden beneath the fortune they both resented.

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But You Prayed: A Lesson In Everyday Reality

All those prayers over the decades had made no dent on Kenya's road fatalities. He had been racking his brain for a spiritual explanation. The truth was plain and simple. This was a systemic problem that required more than just prayers.

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The Arms He Ran To: A Lesson from a Wife’s Loss

Lavender’s long red nails stroked Wilson’s hair, her fingers running through it as if trying to stimulate every follicle. She talked to him in a singsong voice, singing a lullaby. This was the vulnerability Wilson had never shown her. Just his demons

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She is Deaded: A Lesson in Speaking Truth to Children

A five-year-old's innocent questions about her grandmother's passing expose the futility of our best-intentioned euphemisms and reveal a surprising path to honest connection.

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Men and Miscarriage: A Lesson in Grief for Unseen Fathers

The "Unseen" Father: A story about a man who meticulously plans for his baby's arrival, only for it to be shattered by miscarriage, and how he struggles to find anyone who acknowledges his specific loss.

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The Most Expensive Coffin: A Lesson In Value

His father believed wood was for the living and coffin making invited misfortune. Yet after this, the coffinmaking only brought prosperity. New contracts with the funeral director funded assistants and a workshop. He became “the celebrity coffinmaker”. Ironically, trees had taught him death long before he started making coffins. He had watched trees die, split logs hollowed by decay and now he mastered balancing beauty with function.

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They just disappeared: A Lesson in Unresolved Loss

As I started work on this grief series, I had to ask, what lesson, the cases of disappearance without a trace held for us. How was I to hold this discomfort that comes with frozen grief?

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Make It Useful: A Lesson in Organ Donation

My ancestors would say, The body is not yours to keep, it was only a loan, So take my eyes but see my humanity. Take my heart but let it beat compassion into your bones. So tend this vessel, anoint it with struggle.

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The Unseen Grief: A Lesson in Normalcy

This generation, perhaps intuitively, is attempting to rewire their life script. They started on the fringe, morphing into a national collective of shared resolve who refuse to remain unheard and unseen. They cannot unsee what they have seen. In their agitation for agency, they tell us that what we see as normal, is not normal.

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