by Adelaide Obasanya
Atlanta
Rushing to the hospital, I did not for a moment consider that my brother was gone. Even with my heart in my throat, I fully expected, stepping through the automatic doors, that I’d be walking in on laughter—on nurses doubled over the punchline of one of his jokes. But the lobby was solemn. Wide-eyed, the nurse led me to a private room where I sat alone for what felt like an eternity. Then a doctor entered and told me my younger brother, Hubert, was dead. Time stopped, and my world cracked in two.
The following weeks were a blur. I was functional the morning of the funeral, but when I got a call, that my youngest brother had been in an accident and wouldn’t be able to attend—I spiraled. The news triggered a breakdown. I’d been practicing Buddhism for over two years by then, but that was the day I stopped chanting.
Friends and family tried to console me. “You’ll get over this,” they said. “I won’t,” I wanted to tell them.
They meant well. But I’d lost a friend and something more—a co-historian—someone who knew me better in some ways than I knew myself. My SGI friends held a different kind of space. They seemed to grasp that I might be feeling any number of things, that there are as many ways to grieve as there are to love.
Personally, my emotions were on fire. No matter how many times I stopped, dropped and rolled, I could not smother the flames. At some point, I tried the one thing I hadn’t yet: I sat in the flames, and I chanted. It took months, but through anger, confusion, exhaustion and grief, I chanted. The important thing was that I kept chanting and stayed connected to my district.
I treasure my memories of Hubert. One that never fails to make me smile is from the tail end of my childhood—I was 15 and Hubert was 12. We’d just gotten cable TV and were huddled with our youngest brother, watching Avatar, season “Earth,” in which Aang, the show’s hero, journeys through the Earth Kingdom.
Home life was tense at the time, and such untroubled closeness—just my brothers and me—was rare. The show—a true flight of creativity—was a deeply soothing balm.
When “Earth” came to an end, Hubert picked up a pencil and began to draw. Clearly, it was a portrait of Aang, with his distinguishing arrow tattoos, but my big sister instincts told me the lines were off. “You’re doing it wrong,” I said, taking the pencil and setting to work. I didn’t know what I was doing, or how much time had passed, but at the end we took stock, to our surprise, of a convincing sketch of the young Avatar in flight. When I consider where and when I began to awaken to the power and joy of art, and to see myself as an artist, it’s there, at 15, with my brothers.
One person I’ll never forget is my chapter women’s leader who, after Hubert’s passing, called every Monday evening at 6. Often, the call lasted an hour. For six months she did this, listening deeply, saying simply, when faith came up, “When you’re ready, we’ll chant.”
I was in a young women’s Kayo core at the time, studying Ikeda Sensei’s lecture on Nichiren Daishonin’s writing “Happiness in This World,” which contains the famous passage: “Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both joy and suffering as facts of life, and continue chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter what happens” (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 681). Ikeda Sensei explains that “‘Suffer what there is to suffer’ doesn’t mean ignoring the existence of suffering; rather, it means facing reality head-on, viewing it from a Buddhist perspective. …
“‘Enjoy what there is to enjoy’ means to elevate the joys we experience in life to the level of eternal joy … [as the] great path to indestructible happiness is found in consistently chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, in times of both suffering and joy” (The New Human Revolution, vol. 24, pp. 184–85).
Honestly, I didn’t know what this meant, exactly—what my suffering would look like from a Buddhist perspective and how it might somehow become joy. But after two, maybe three months of Monday evening talks, I was ready to begin chanting again.
As I did, I felt a subtle shift in my grief—I was not simply sitting in, but walking with it—observing, respecting and listening to what it had to say.
Hubert had been an artist and had awakened the creative in me, leading me to pursue a degree in mass media arts and later, work in the film industry. However, I’d transitioned away from a creative career in film——first to data analytics, then to fintech and finally to e-commerce. Wherever I worked, I felt deadlocked. But as I continued to chant for Hubert’s happiness, my prayer reawakened a part of myself that had gone quiet: the creative part. I began to draw, then paint, then write again, if only to quiet the flames raging in my mind and heart. I sought guidance from a senior in faith who said: “If we’re struggling, let’s go visit someone who’s struggling. That’s how we’ll break through.” It sounded counterintuitive—how could I help someone move forward when my own feet felt so heavy? But she seemed so joyful, despite plenty of problems of her own. I decided to give it a shot.
In March of this year, I put her words to the test. Alongside her and my chapter women’s leader, we encouraged 10 young women’s division members to attend our monthly discussion meeting. Tying this prayer to a personal one, I vowed to break through in my creative life by expanding the creative writing project I’d been working on for months, dedicating time to it every night after work.
With every young woman we visited, every conversation we had, every struggle we shared and determined to challenge with faith—I grew lighter, more determined. My day job did not feel so tedious, and in fact became the place I challenged myself to grow. And my writing became a consistent source of joy. Eight youth came out to that meeting, all of whom left smiling—me included.
I was told once, back when I was sitting in the flames of grief, that I could chant for Hubert’s happiness.
To my brother, the artist, the comedian, the gentle giant, I say, in my morning and evening prayers: I know you’re walking beside me as I bring laughter, joy and art to whoever I can, wherever I go on this journey through Earth. And I know, wherever you are, that you’re becoming happy—I can feel it in my bones when I chant for you—because I’m becoming happy too.
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