The Seat Everyone Else Avoids

Most people spend their study breaks scrolling through social media.

Somewhere on a university campus, however, there is a library seat that offers a very different kind of distraction.It sits beside a window.And beyond that window is a morgue.

It is not exactly the view most people would choose while trying to concentrate on a textbook. In fact, most people would probably choose another seat without thinking twice. There are plenty of other windows, plenty of other corners, plenty of other things to look at.

Yet perhaps that is precisely what makes this particular seat worth noticing.

Because sometimes, the places we instinctively avoid have the most to show us.

From that window, people arrive at the morgue carrying stories that cannot be seen from a distance. Some arrive in expensive cars; others in ordinary ones. Some are dressed carefully, while others seem to have left home without giving much thought to what they were wearing. There are differences in wealth, appearance, age and circumstance.

But grief seems remarkably uninterested in any of them.

No bank balance makes losing someone less painful. No expensive clothing makes a goodbye easier. Wealth can determine where someone lives, what they can afford and the opportunities available to them, but it cannot negotiate with loss.

Perhaps that is one of the uncomfortable equalities of being human.

The same can be said of age.Children arrive holding onto adults. Young people stand beside grieving parents. Older people lean on relatives for support. There is no particular age at which loss becomes easier to understand.

Grief does not check identification at the door.
It simply arrives.

And perhaps that is what makes the scene so striking.Because outside the morgue, life continues with its usual urgency.

Nairobi is almost always moving.Walk through the CBD and everyone seems to be headed somewhere. Someone is rushing to work. Someone is negotiating a price. Someone is trying to make a sale. Someone is late. Someone is laughing into a phone. Someone is carrying groceries. Someone is trying to make enough money to get through the day.

Thousands of people can occupy the same streets while living completely different realities.

At the entrance of a morgue, however, the usual purposes seem to fall away.

People are not there because of their professions, social standing or ambitions.They are there because someone mattered to them.And for a brief moment, that is enough.

Perhaps that is what makes grief strangely unifying. It strips away the introductions we use to navigate ordinary life—student, doctor, businessperson, driver, parent, stranger, wealthy, struggling and leaves behind something much simpler:a human being who has lost another human being.

Sometimes, after the silence of a goodbye, voices begin to rise.

Different people speak at once, each carrying their own version of the same pain. From a distance, the voices can almost merge into one continuous sound.

It is strangely reminiscent of a prayer room after everyone has begun praying.

Different words.
Different voices.
Different stories.
Yet somehow, the emotion needs no translation.

Perhaps grief is one of the few languages in which humanity is completely fluent.

Then there are the hugs.They are different from the casual embraces exchanged on ordinary days. These are the kind that seem to make time stop. People hold onto one another for longer. Phones disappear into pockets. Conversations become less important. Nobody seems particularly concerned about looking composed.

For a few seconds, there is no performance.
Only love.

And that raises an uncomfortable question:
Why are people often most expressive with their love when they are confronted with the possibility, or reality, of losing someone?
Why do we wait for funerals to say how much someone meant to us?

Why do apologies, affection, phone calls and forgiveness so often become things we intend to do “later,” as though tomorrow were something we had already been promised?

Perhaps mortality is not only a reminder that life ends.
Perhaps it is also an invitation to pay attention while it is still happening.

The ordinary things suddenly seem less ordinary.The rushed conversations.The annoying relatives.The friend who calls too often.The parent whose advice has been heard a thousand times.The person whose messages are sometimes ignored because there is always going to be time to reply later.

Until there isn’t.

There is something humbling about watching people arrive at a place they never wanted to visit.It reminds us that beneath the differences we spend so much of our lives emphasizing—status, age, money, occupation and background,we are remarkably similar in the things that matter most.

We love.
We lose.
We grieve.
And somehow, we keep living.
Maybe that is why the seat everyone else avoids offers such an unusual view of life.It does not show life at its most glamorous.It shows life stripped of its distractions.

And perhaps that is exactly the view we need sometimes.Not one that distracts us from reality,but one that gently reminds us to live it.

~ Joy N.