Feet don't fail me now

Because this grief thing is kicking my ass.

Goodness gracious, I miss my father.

Na wa o.

Prof passed in May 2025. The burial was in September. And last week, the Okwukwu and Ikwa-ozu were just completed, the full Igbo ritual cycle of farewell that ensures the full passage of the dearly departed.

You know, when we were burying my dad last year, I didn’t shed a tear. It wasn’t the man being a man nonsense, the strong first son standing tall and firm during tough times. I just didn’t. When Ugo and I had to go identify him before he was transported to our compound, I was cool. When I had to open the casket for his viewing, I was cool. I was the last one to see him physically, as I had to close the casket for the last time. Steady as Chidi. When he was put into the ground, I was clear-eyed.

And now...for the past couple of months, there is not a day when Oga Chidi is not in tears, at a loss as to what the hell happened. Shoot, the triggers are scattered all over the place. When Chimamanda Adichie lost her son last December, I was caught off guard as to how emotional I got as her son’s fatal encounter with the Nigerian medical infrastructure was basically the same for my dad.

Bruh.

They’ve been silent. Often by myself. Some movies and TV shows are the culprits in this too. And they come out of nowhere, sometimes quiet and calm, others like a sudden storm, heaving and breathing with a vengeance. Like what the hell?

Here we go…excuse me. Give me a minute.

And so more and more, I’ve been going back to this mantra, a phrase that I often deploy when I need to keep moving, to not freeze or wallow in the moment.

Feet, abeg, don’t fail me now o. I love that term, and was introduced to it like pretty much everyone I know now, via the humongous Funkadelic track, “One Nation Under A Groove”. It wasn’t always a positive one. It was a racially loaded term used in early 20th-century Black minstrel performance, a comedic expression of urgency and fear. The joke was basically that the Black sidekick would be trembling and fleeing, begging his feet to carry him away from danger. Just hardcore racial caricature.

Now, of course, leave it to Black people to make something good out of a negative. In New Orleans, the people took that phrase and flipped it one-eighty. In the jazz funeral tradition, which is rooted in West African ceremonial practice, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” became the song of the second line. So, after the burial, after the body is laid to rest, the crowd turns from mourning to movement. If you know anything about New Orleans culture, you’ll know that the band kicks into gear and the streets fill up, and they boogie and march. And they sing Feet Don’t Fail Me Now in celebration, moving through death not away from it, moving past it, choosing to move forward. The words are written and said in English. The sentiment, as Alan Lomax put it, is African. African like the Okwukwu and Ikwa-ozu.

I love it. Because that’s exactly how it is done, how it was done for Prof.

For us youngins, George Clinton and Funkadelic took it one step further in 1978 on “One Nation Under A Groove,” where the phrase becomes a declaration of liberation: nothing can stop us now. So now that phrase has morphed from fear, to funeral celebration to full-on defiant joy. Full on Okwukwu and Ikwa-ozu moves.

That’s why I am asking my feet to behave o. Abeg, as I navigate this emotional arc of my life, this is Chidi saying to himself: brother, be where your feet are. Stay on mission. And Feet? Don’t fail me now. Because I am struggling for real, we’re getting through it, but I got work to do. I have family to take care of. Momsie is still here, Chidi, and losing Dad makes it even more critical to appreciate her and the rest of the important people who are close to me.

“It is better to conquer grief, than to deceive it” - Seneca.

You hear that, Feet? Let’s go.