Two Years Later: Remembering a Gem

Some losses never truly go away, we just learn to live with them.

2023 was a year of loss for me.

It didn’t even give me a chance to ease into the new year before serving my family and me back-to-back losses.

I’ve struggled to write about it because thinking about it still hurts.

Time heals all wounds they say… but does it really?

I’ve lost people in the past—friends, family, family friends—but no loss has hit as deeply or as close to home as the one in 2023.

Especially the one that happened exactly two years ago today.

Two years ago, I lost someone I considered a gem.

A fave.

An all-around amazing human.

I don’t hold many people in high esteem the way I did him.

It sounds cliché, but to know him was to love him.

And it still hurts.

Hurts to remember that he’s no longer here.

No one to tease me about sucking my thumb as a child.

No one to call me by my middle name like my first name doesn’t exist.

No one to care so deeply about others that it almost felt incomprehensible.

Ask anyone about Akintoye Akinyemi, and they’ll say the same things—

Jovial. Loving. Selfless. Caring. Giving.

Someone who poured himself into others, even when he had nothing left to give.

Always wanting to see everyone happy.

I miss him.

I really do.

I never imagined he wouldn’t be at my wedding.

Or that he wouldn’t meet my children.

There are people you just assume will be in your life forever.

And he was one of them.

So waking up to my mum unlocking my door to break the news that Saturday morning was the biggest shock of my life.

I didn’t see it coming.

Just a month before, I had lost my granddad.

Another shock.

But he was older, so it felt somewhat understandable.

It made it easier to process his death.

But Toyebaba was young.

And he was fine.

Until he wasn’t.

We had seen him a few months before, spent time with him.

It was an unplanned trip.

But looking back now, maybe that was Allah’s way of making sure we got to say our goodbyes.

I’m grateful he said the Shahadah.

It gladdens my heart.

It has made accepting his death a little easier.

It has made me live life hoping that, when my time comes, I too will get to say the Shahadah.

Because in the end, that’s what truly matters.

Two years ago today, we lost a gem.

And although it was hard to accept, we’ve had to move forward with the knowledge that he is in a good place.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.