The Nature of Grief

Chimamanda Adichie bears witness to the fact that grief is thoroughly complex, and it encompasses a variety of human emotions. She expected to be horribly sad after the death of her father, and she is, shaking her fists and wailing enough to frighten her four-year-old daughter. But she also feels that she cannot breathe, for the air seems made of glue. Shock immobilizes Adichie, and she sees no way forward.

In the midst of shock and sadness she feels the bare physicality of grief. Adichie did not expect to have sore muscles from crying herself to sleep. Her body aches from the crying, and she tastes the bitter sadness in her mouth. She feels the grief in her heart: "My heart--my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here--is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with...