This is a First Person column by Stella Igweamaka, who lives in Edmonton. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I was standing in my kitchen feeling grateful and proud that I had been selected for a leadership program at work when the call came. 

Calls on WhatsApp usually meant home. Nigeria. Family. Familiar voices that carried warmth across oceans. But my heart tightened before I even answered. Somehow, I sensed this time was different.

There was no warning. No time to prepare. Just a voice from far away telling me that my father was gone. I gripped my phone, trying to listen, while my mind rushed ahead to everything I would not be able to do. 

I wouldn’t travel. I wouldn’t sit beside my family. I wouldn’t take part in the rituals that make loss feel real. I would grieve from here, my new home in Edmonton — an ocean and nearly a day of travel away from Nigeria. 

This kind of grief didn’t come with a dish dropped off at my door or arms wrapped tightly around me. It arrived quietly while the world around me felt loud with holiday celebrations in December.

Being an immigrant means learning how to live with that distance.

What distance took from me

When I moved to Edmonton in 2020, my focus was survival. Finding work. Settling in. Building a sense of belonging. Sending money back home. I didn’t think about what distance might quietly take from me. I assumed the people I loved would still be there when I was ready to return.

Moments meant for joy — birthdays, graduations, weddings, cultural gatherings and especially the holiday season — sometimes carry a particular heaviness.

December amplifies it. People talk about going home. Flights booked months in advance. Family reunions planned with care. Traditions repeated year after year. 

When people asked me “are you going home this year?” I smiled and said “not this time,” without explaining that going home wasn’t just expensive. It meant finding money I didn’t have, time off I couldn’t easily take and rearranging a life I had worked so hard to build in Canada. It felt like choosing between the life I was building and the people I had left behind. And at that moment, going home felt impossible.

Time passed quietly. Two years turned into five. And then one day in 2024, someone I loved — someone I fully expected to see again — was gone. Just like that.

Memories rushed in where my dad’s presence could not.

I thought about the last time I saw him. The hug before I boarded my flight to Canada. The long conversations that stretched into the evening. The encouragement he offered so freely, rooted in his deep belief in me. The home-cooked meals that always left me wanting more. 

My father and I shared the kind of bond that didn’t always need words; just presence, laughter and the comfort of being understood. He was my biggest cheerleader. 

Did I make the right choice?

Loss has a way of forcing questions you didn’t plan to ask.

I found myself re-evaluating everything: the decision to leave, the life I’m building in Edmonton, whether the future I came here chasing carried a hidden cost. 

I wondered if one kind of suffering had simply been exchanged for another. These questions didn’t come all at once. They returned in waves during moments of grief, during celebrations and during the quiet in between.

What surprised me most was how practical grief became. I counted vacation days. I looked at flight prices. I weighed responsibility against desire. Grief, I learned, does not wait for paperwork, finances or timing. It arrives whether or not your life has room for it.

Most of my mourning for my dad and other loved ones happened through a screen. I watched memorials from afar, straining to recognize faces. I tried to sound steady on late-night calls, swallowing tears so no one would worry about me too much. I mourned the absence of rituals I had grown up believing were essential.

In a particularly heavy moment, I was encouraged to speak with a grief therapist. In one session, she told me “there is a unique ache in knowing exactly where you wish you were and knowing you cannot get there.” 

That line stayed with me, partly because I didn’t grow up knowing there were words or support for grief like this.

A new type of grief

So I learned to grieve in fragments. I lit a candle alone. I cooked familiar food on days that mattered, even when no one else understood why. I whispered prayers in the language that feels safest when my heart is breaking. I called siblings and cousins when time zones allowed. But nothing replaced being there in person. Nothing.

Grieving from a distance is lonely not because I lack people around me, but because few understand the layered weight of it. The sadness, yes. But also, the guilt of absence. Gratitude for opportunity tangled with the pain of separation. A constant negotiation between survival and sorrow. These are not the things I considered when I left home in search of something better.

And still, life continues.

I go to work. I answer emails. I show up when I can. I carry grief alongside responsibility not because it’s easy, but because I don’t know another way.

Love does not weaken with distance, and neither does loss.

I’ve realized grieving from a distance is not a failure of belonging. It is proof that love travels quietly, stubbornly, across borders, time zones and years.

And sometimes, surviving the season is enough.

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