but I am Trusting God

The tomb is empty. But there is still a grave with your name on it. Sweet memories soured by the depth of our grief and an awkward sense of relief that I’m not having to plan end-of-life care. I always told you that I’d kidnap you, bring you back to England and force you to live out your final days here. I guess death is one way of ensuring you get to stay in Scotland. We wouldn’t have buried you anywhere else.

Today is my father’s first birthday since his passing. It’s so like God to ensure that the grief of today couldn’t weigh too heavy, because it is softened by the foremost knowledge that the tomb is empty and sweetened by chocolate eggs that have very little to do with Christian faith.

I’ve been told that my eulogy is “traumatically beautiful, beautifully traumatic”. I’m glad. That’s exactly how I would have described our relationship, and I wanted what I said of you to capture all of what you meant to me and speak to the complexity of losing a father who didn’t always answer my calls, but who loved me so deeply.

The tomb is empty, but your grave is not, and I couldn’t eat hollandaise sauce this morning, because the smell reminded me of the rot. God knew that today would be today, that the 5th April 2026 would be Easter. I guess it somehow makes things sweeter. Christ is risen… but you are not.

I promise to keep my promise to remember you well. So I’ll play Scrabble today, making sure everybody knows you’re the reason that I have such a way with words. I don’t know how to move beyond missing you, but I’m trusting God.

—

In case any readers are interested, my eulogy is pasted below:

As a disclaimer, I do not intend to make my father’s life sound more inspirational or rounded than it was. His life is one of multiple realities, an oxymoronic living of sorts. So, it would be disingenuous to speak of daddy as an omnipresent father, a benevolent husband and an ever-communicative brother. He was not always those things. 

He was a loving yet absent father, a caring yet distant brother, a humorous yet lonely friend, a romantic yet difficult husband, and probably a kind yet annoying neighbour. So today, we mourn, not only for the man he was, but also for the man we hoped for him to be, the one we prayed with all our hearts that he would become. 

Today, we do not only bury him in body, but with him, our lost hopes and dreams of moments we longed to come in the future. The memories we longed to create but never had the opportunity to. This is our space to mourn. 

But this is also our day to decide. 

Following my daddy’s death, I did some research into memory. How well we remember events is dependent on how many times we have recalled and retold them. The human mind is fragile, and our memories are products of the stories we tell ourselves and retell to others. 

Our choice is this: what of Oloyede Adetokunbo Adedamola Ayowunmi Ladipo, Daddy, will we remember? What of him will we gift to the world that does not yet have knowledge of his existence through the stories we tell? I have made my choice, and it is this: my children will know I had a father who loved me deeply, whose distance was driven by his own dysfunctions and not by lack of care, whose face lit up when he saw me and who longed, more than anything to be a good father. They know that he took me swimming, taught me how to play Scrabble and ensured I pronounced words properly so I didn’t get a thick Brummie accent. They will know that he was a good man.

According to psychologist Catharine Young, stress can affect our ability to remember, and people who are depressed are 40% more likely to experience memory loss. So, we not only have to choose to remember well, but to give our bodies the room, strength and capacity to hold on to those memories by looking after ourselves, resting and treating our ailments with urgency.

Above all, my children will know that despite the shortcomings of my earthly father, I have one in heaven whose love is deeper than the ocean floor. In life, we are born with many constants. We know that the sun will set, but tomorrow the sun will rise. We know that waves will crash, and tides will recede. We know that birds will sing and trees will bear fruit. 

God has set in order many constants. For most of us, the existence of two parents is a constant we are born into. But now for Yemi and I, that constant has ceased to exist. Distant as he may, at times have been, Daddy was one of my constants. So now, in his absence, I find myself trying to familiarise myself with life, with the world, all over again. 

Growing up, I was constantly told how much I look like daddy. I hated it. What little girl wants to look like a man? Let alone one she didn’t see as often as she would have liked. However, after hearing daddy passed away, when I looked in the mirror — for the very first time in my life — I was immensely proud to see the contours of my father’s face reflecting back it. Now, that was a very complicated feeling to navigate. That only in his death did I feel joy over the fact that I resemble him so much, and only in death did I rejoice upon hearing his echo in my own laughter.

So, I covered up all the mirrors in my house, because I couldn’t bear to process the complexity of my feelings every time I saw myself in the mirror. This week, I set myself the challenge of looking in the mirror each day, once again. I am learning to accept my new reality and lack of constant. 

It is a reality we are all burdened with processing. But as I say, we have a choice to make. What of daddy will we choose to remember? We cannot afford to concern ourselves with judging his choices, their consequence has reached its expiry date. So let us choose to remember and retell fond stories. Let us honour daddy by allowing his intellect, joy and wonderful calm demeanour to radiate through us all. 

I will always remember our little challenges, of spelling through Scrabble, of language acquisition through having to have our catch up calls in Yoruba. Kárè bàá mi, o ti lo sun. Sinmi dada bàá mi. Onifemi. 

I promise to remember you well. 

For all of daddy’s faults, troubles and struggles, he was much more funny, caring and wise. Our honour is to have loved him and our hope, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 13:13, is this, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.”