Ancestral Echoes: My Journey as a Reincarnation of My Nigerian Grandmother
Love in this life and the next — an insight into the meaning of death and destiny in Yoruba culture.
My father has never reprimanded me.
Not once.
Never bruising my delicate feelings with a raised voice, nor glaring at me from beneath a stern brow.
As I near my 32nd birthday, you can be relieved of the assumption that it has anything to do with the current, modern concept of “gentle parenting”.
Because it doesn’t.
Most Nigerian elders wouldn’t understand the Westernised idea of doing away with authoritarian parenting for the benefit of a child’s emotional development. That would be like asking God to change the way you look because it doesn’t quite go with your outfit.
My father is a Yoruba man, and in his culture, you must never speak out of line to an elder. Such impertinence is the mark of great incivility and discourtesy to your parents and your family’s honour. And, as such, he’s never disciplined me.
And no, that’s not a typo.
I said that you must never raise your voice to an elder, and that’s why my father has never disciplined me.
Given the contemporary understanding of familial hierarchy, I’m sure you’re wondering how that works.
To better explain this, we must hark back to 22nd February 1988 — what he readily cites as the darkest day of his entire life:
His mother’s death.
This date marks the dawn of a new reality for my father’s family: an unimagined future without the presence of the matriarch and beating heart of our clan.
From what people have told me, she was a formidable woman — caring, compassionate, soft-spoken, nurturing. Blessed with an abundant benevolence and a wide-reaching maternality that extended to anyone who needed it; she was very generous of spirit, even when life wasn’t generous to her.
Traditional Yoruba culture dictates that when a person physically dies, their spirit goes to a realm known as Orun.
To consider this realm Heaven or Hell-adjacent is understandable, but not quite accurate. It’s not a paradisiacal plain located above us nor fiery, hot pits beneath us, but rather a dimension in which divinities and ancestors reside after their time on Earth runs out.
We believe that our ancestors maintain a profound connection to the living and play an active role in our lives by guiding, protecting, and watching over us from this dimension.
So while the events of that fateful February day created a physical and emotional void at the centre of my father’s family, it would soon be eclipsed by rejoicing and merriment almost 4 years later.
April 5th, 1992.
According to my father, April 5th, 1992, is the greatest, most joyous day he’s ever lived.
It was on this day that my grandmother’s spirit departed from Orun and returned to Earth, and the fragments of my father’s broken heart were delicately pieced back together.
April 5th, 1992, marks the day on which a beloved mother was returned to the arms of her loving son.
April 5th, 1992, is the day I was born.
Reincarnation is an interesting topic because it challenges the finality that is commonly associated with the idea of death in the West.
Atheists argue—that’s it. We potter about on Earth for an indeterminate number of years, and then we shuffle off this mortal coil when it’s our time to go. No take-backs, no curtain calls, just peace out Girl Scout.
Even many of those who believe in an afterlife typically believe that the transition from one state to the next is a unidirectional experience. You flow from Earth to your eternal resting place, but never back again — death being a sort of symbolic non-return valve in the life-to-afterlife pipeline.
Others deem reincarnation total woo-woo — a well-intended effort to temper the grief experienced by those who have loved and lost.
Overall, it seems to be an idea reserved for the earthy types — the ones who wear crystal amulets and natural fibres, burn sage barefoot, and balance their chakras whilst sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Yoruba people believe that the dead can reincarnate through the birth of a child and thus return to Earth out of love for their family.
While my parents opted out of knowing my sex ahead of my birth, my father was 100% certain I was a girl. To such a degree, that when my mum revealed to him that she was pregnant with me, he gasped and exclaimed:
“My mum’s coming back!”
And he immediately began making all the appropriate preparations.
You’re picturing him picking up pretty pink dresses and princess-themed toys, aren’t you? Well, you’re not wrong, because that he did. However, what I really mean by “preparations” has a lot to do with plans that were conceived decades before I was.
While my grandmother was alive, she knew she wanted to reincarnate after dying and made a definitive plan to do so. She discussed this with her family and presented them with three intentions:
- To return to the family through her second-born child — my father. You’d expect her to have chosen the eldest, but according to my grandmother, he wasn’t responsible enough, and she didn’t feel like she’d be “living her best life”, or whatever the kids are saying these days, through him. A formidable woman, as I said.
- To reincarnate as a girl child, not a boy. She was determined to experience the modernisation of society as a woman. Interestingly enough, out of all 8 of his siblings, my father is the only one with a daughter. Every other baby born to our family (21, to be specific) has been a boy.
- To be well-educated this time round. Despite being a highly-respected botanist who knew all of the medicinal properties of local plant life and could create herbal remedies for any ailment, disease, disorder, or malady, she was illiterate. She hadn’t had the opportunity to attend school (as was common for women born in the 30s) and was, therefore, unable to read and write. But she was determined, upon her return, to be an educated woman. This explains why I was enrolled in French school before I could talk and had my first chemistry set — complete with a mini lab coat and goggles, thank you very much — by the time I was 3.
When I was growing up, people asked me if this idea felt somewhat weighty to me. Like a responsibility that was thrust upon me without my consent, and one I wasn’t exactly cut out for.
I guess my friends viewed it as some sort of third-world version of The Princess Diaries.
It sounds serious and significant and maybe even a touch scary to those who aren’t familiar with these kinds of beliefs. I get that — it’s understandable.
But this wasn’t bestowed upon me randomly like a winning ticket drawn out of a tombola. It’s just the way of things — the natural flow of one existence into another like a curling wave gathering momentum before rolling to its frothy end on the shore.
There are no rules to follow, standards to live up to, or expectations of any particular outcome. It’s just life. And death.
And through our efforts to shelter ourselves from thinking about it, we frequently forget that death is undoubtedly the most vital part of life.
Understanding how finite our existence is is what gives it its meaning.
So no, I don’t feel crushed under the pressure of such a tradition. I see it for the good it’s done and the peace it’s brought my family. I consider it an honour that, in some way, my being here was orchestrated by forces I’ve never met but also know deeply.
So now you better understand my relationship with my father. Why he is featured in so many of my stories here on Medium.
Why our bond means so much to us both, and why, through any conceivable adversity, we will always have each other. Why I always tell people that we go way back, he and I.
He’s my old man, and I’m his old lady.
We, humans, are the sum of so many parts — more than we can quantify and many of which we’ve little to no awareness of.
The belief that we are unattached to those who came before us isn’t one I hold, but I also think we have the luxury to carve out our own individual experiences while we’re among the living.
When people compliment me on the good parts of my being, it touches the depths of my soul that extend beyond my self-created identity. Because it’s not just about me.
I exist as a good person because she once was. She continues to exist as a good person because she lives in me.
Her death didn’t sever her connection to her family, but rather, it encouraged it to metamorphose into a new form.
I don’t really know what the future holds. What kind of life and death await me remains largely mysterious to me, and I quite like it that way. But I have a feeling I’ll be back again one day. And I’ll carry the spirit of a formidable woman with me, like stitches through the fabric of time.
There’s something rather beautiful about that, isn’t there?
For more content like this, check out my other Nigeria-related articles!
Thank you very much for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below.
If you enjoyed this read and are feeling generous, please consider buying me a coffee as a token of your appreciation. I will send you positive vibes with every single sip. ☕🌸