Following the loss of her mum in her early 20s, Eloho Okumo reflects on supporting her circle through their own losses.

My friend Joy went silent for three months. 

No calls returned. No texts answered. I kept reaching out — messages, visits to her house, a letter through the door. Nothing. Then one evening, out of nowhere, a funeral invite landed in my inbox. That was how I found out her mum had died. 

I stared at my phone and felt everything at once — sadness, heartbreak, and then something deeper: recognition. A body-level knowing of exactly what was about to unfold for her. 

The sleepless nights. The admin nobody warns you about. The silence that moves into your home and doesn’t leave. 

I lost my mum in July 2012. I was twenty-two. No warning, no goodbye, no preparation. She was my mother, my father, my protector, my everything. She spoke softly — called me sweetheart, darling, my love — and when she died, the softest voice in my world went silent. 

Thirteen years later, I thought that chapter had settled. Not healed — I don’t believe grief heals. But settled enough that it no longer knocked the wind out of me every morning. 

Then my friends started losing their mothers.

First Deby — whose mum had signed my naturalisation papers to become a British citizen, who welcomed me into their home like family, whose parents’ love I witnessed every time I walked through their door. I was at work when I found out. House of Fraser, Oxford Street. I told my manager I couldn’t stay. I was frantic, crying, more dramatic than Deby herself — because I knew that home, and I knew what losing her would do to it. 

Then Joy. Then Yasmina. And I realised grief doesn’t just come for you once. It circles back — through the people you love. 

When Joy finally resurfaced, she sat across from me and said, Eloho, I lie in bed next to my husband and I still feel completely alone. How did you do this at twenty-two? 

I didn’t have a good answer. Because I didn’t do it well. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I stopped being me. I packed a bag and flew to Nigeria thinking distance would fix it. Grief has frequent flyer miles. It unpacked right next to me.

But hearing Joy — an adult, with a partner beside her — describe the same loneliness I felt at twenty-two in an empty flat, and still feel to this day, confirmed what I had always suspected: 

This kind of loss is not something you outgrow. It simply is.

At some point — I can’t tell you exactly when — death stopped being something that happened to me and became something I understood as part of life. 

Not softer. Just real. 

After Deby, it was Joy. After Joy, Yasmina. And somewhere along the way, I started to accept: we are all going to die. 

My friend Esse lost a close friend. She was devastated. And I stood there steady — not cold, but unmoved in the way only someone who has buried the deepest loss can be. In my head, quietly: that’s a soft loss. The main debt hasn’t come yet. 

Grief reorganises your hierarchy. When you’ve lost the person who was your entire foundation, other losses register differently. Not as less painful — but as less final. 

I thought nothing could ambush me again. Then Tawa’s husband died. He was forty.

Sudden. No warning. We had plans that week — he was meant to be going on holiday, and I was going to stay with Tawa so we could live a little, go out, enjoy ourselves. Instead, I got a phone call on a Friday morning while I was working at my desk, and I screamed. Why? Why? Why? 

This death broke the philosophy I had built. My panic attacks came back. My anxiety came back. My sleepless nights returned. The grief I thought I had graduated from pulled me back into the classroom. No amount of experience makes you immune. Grief can still drop you to your knees when you least expect it. 

What nobody tells you about being further along in grief is that you become the experienced one. Not by choice. Not by qualification. By survival. 

I am not a soft griever. I don’t sugarcoat it. When my friends cry, I don’t say it’ll get better. I say: this is going to be long. You will not be the same person. Some friends will disappear. Some days you won’t want to get out of bed — and that is not weakness. That is grief doing what grief does. 

I always tell them — let me know if my delivery is too harsh. Because I refuse to lie about what this costs. 

I don’t collapse with people. I don’t perform sorrow. I stand beside them — not because I don’t feel it, but because I know what they actually need. Not hysteria. Endurance. 

And here is the part nobody writes about.

When your friends start grieving, they disappear — the same way you once did. Joy is silent. Yasmina is withdrawn. Tawa has pulled inward. Deby is quieter than she used to be. The friends who held your world together are now inside their own darkness, and you understand it completely because you lived it. But understanding it doesn’t stop you from missing them. 

I think of grief as a school. Some of my friends are in the early years — raw, disoriented, just trying to survive the day. I’m somewhere in my PhD — still learning, still hurting, but further along the road. I’ll never graduate. None of us will. But I’m in a place now where I want to live, to have fun, to feel joy without guilt. And my friends can’t do that yet. Not because they don’t want to. Grief won’t let them. 

So I wait. I build new friendships, which is beautiful. But I miss my people. I miss laughing with them without heaviness in the room. I miss the versions of us that existed before loss rearranged everything. 

There comes a season when it’s no longer just your story. It becomes everyone’s.

I don’t believe there is a positive reason for losing a mother. Nobody can tell me one. Regardless of how my life turned out — it doesn’t matter. There is nothing redemptive about that absence. 

But I believe grief becomes a beautiful discomfort. Not lighter. Just more familiar. Something you learn to sit beside rather than run from. 

If you are reading this and your circle is starting to experience loss — whether you lost someone young and now watch your friends enter the tunnel you already walked, or you are the one just stepping into it — you are not alone in this.

The most useful thing I have learned in thirteen years is this: you don’t need the right words. You just need to stay. Sit beside them. Let them go quiet. Let them fall apart. 

And when they look at you and say, how did you survive this? — tell them the truth. You haven’t. You’re just further along the road. 

And now you’ll walk it together. 

Eloho Okumo

eloho okumo is a London-based writer, creative director, and human communication consultant. After losing her mother at twenty-two, she wrote Sleepless Night: A Companion for the Dark Hours — a memoir spanning thirteen years of grief, panic, faith, and the unglamorous work of survival. https://linktr.ee/elohookumo

The book includes a Companion Toolkit — practical pages for when grief makes words impossible, designed for both the grieving person and those supporting them, helping bridge silence, reduce isolation, and strengthen connection during loss. Now available on Amazon. 

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