death - Oyunga Pala

Why Did He Go Out and Die Like That?

In cases of suicides, what is required is deeper communal healing work that goes beyond messaging of solidarity, hope and calling on experts. Most are really gone by then, already checked out of a miserable life, simply waiting for a final trigger that will hand them the permission to check out. If there was ever a metaphor for a death wish, then suicide is its manifestation.

View Post

Baba’s Gone: The Missing Chapter. Part 2

Amollo taught us how to hold pain and transform sorrow into strength. He was our grief alchemist who turned suffering into blessings.

View Post

Baba’s Gone! Part 1

When Baba died, I became numb. He had died of a heart attack….

View Post

The Alchemy of Brotherhood and Grief

To my brothers, who heard the suppressed cry, The heavy, muffled cough in my voice, When my world collapsed and turned all grey, When the clock of my soul froze…

View Post

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.

View Post

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.

View Post

Reflections On The Ones We Lost

The Order of the Good Death: A Lesson in Closure

When someone says they want to "die well," they are usually imagining the size of the funeral.

View Post

Reflections On The Ones We Lost

Where Are Their Graves? A Lesson in Remembrance

I know, I am part of a grave obsessed generation. The permanence of graves is our language of love, our attempt to control legacy and pushback against the ephemeral nature of life.

View Post

When Sorrow Refuses Silence: A Lesson in Unruly Grief

Allow people to grieve in the only way they know how. It is not a competition. Where it is genuine, it rehumanizes and demands a response. There is nothing irrational about unruly grief. It is a profoundly rational response to irrational, cruel death.

View Post

Culture

The Funeral

The Netherlands is a country about the size of Garissa county in Kenya with a population of 17 million people. Space is premium and in some places graves are rented and can be reused after a 10 to 20 year lease and the remains are cleared after the time expires.

View Post