This summer, I was in Benin and went to my paternal grandmother’s grave, visiting it for the first time since she died some years ago. Her grave is not just a stone in the ground of a cemetery, but a room within her family’s house, a place where life continues to unfold with death resting beneath us. With my brother, my aunt and my grand mothers’s siblings, we settled in the room, removed the dust, sat, chatted and performed rituals and prayers for her soul to continue resting in peace and wisdom. There, in the presence of her spirit, we shared foods and drinks that are specially made for death rituals, we laughed and told stories about her and us, not only beautiful ones, but also painful ones. 

The room and the entire family compound filled with memory, with sound and silence, with the feeling that she was still among us. We stayed the whole afternoon until dusk. The light dimmed; the air thickened with memory, and I felt how thin the line between life and death truly is. How in our ways, death is never separate from life but part of its ongoing rhythm. It was there, sitting in that room together with everyone, repeating the same ritualistic gestures, being in silence and patient, that I remembered that dying , like dyeing is a slow process, a transformation, a return.