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Changes

By

Amanda Dibando Awanjo

•

A brown pile of leaves. Text reads: Changes, by Amanda Dibando Awanjo.
A person sitting at a desk, which faces a window showing a set of brown trees. Text reads: In 2023, I lost my father right as the leaves began their journey back into the ground.
A person sitting at a desk with a desk lamp turned on. The desk faces a window showing a set of brown trees. Text reads: I'm not sure how to sustain this change in my heart. But my heart, like the leaves, doesn't care about unsureness. Change comes anyway.
A deck facing a row of houses and a yellow tree. Text reads: So much has changed. Leaves circling the sky around my apartment are now lain across the dirt, scattered on car roofs. I'm not sure where all this change is leading me to. More change? A new way of living?
A border of brown leaves surrounding text, which reads "I want to learn from the leaves that have found themselves crushed under my shoe.
Brown and yellow leaves falling, with a light blue background. Text reads: How did it feel to grow knowing winter was coming? Did you know when you were a tiny green bulb that to begin is to end?
A drawing of a stone building, a bus stop, a brown tree, and a brown pile of leaves. Text reads: Their journey—tree, sidewalk, boot, bus, building, carpet—a mix of random and inevitable. Death, decay, end. Change. Change. Change.
A drawing wearing a purple hat. They are looking at a stream and a grove of trees. Text reads: Last year's loss rearranged me into a new being. Same-faced but with a dawning newness shifting and glistening like water. Absorbing this new reality, I feel fractured and whole, like skipped rocks on a river leaving behind infinite patterns of ripples.
A picture frame with a photo of a man wearing a white shirt and a red tie. Text reads: Since my father has passed away, I have found him again and again in pictures and stories. Each new picture reminds me of what I know of him and what I don't. In one, I'm tucked underneath his arm. Smiling awkwardly and stoically on my way to church.
A drawing of a person leaning back in a desk chair. A desk lamp shines on a to-do list and a photo of a man and a woman. A window shows trees with no leaves.
A man wearing a shirt with the flag of Cameroon on the front. The man is sitting cross-legged. Text reads: In another, an image of him—when my brother and I were babies. He's younger—younger than I am now. Clothed in all the swag, mischief, and lightness that I recognize from my own twenties. I'd never seen this picture until we were making the slideshow for the funeral. In my twenties, when I'd felt so disconnected from my parents, when rebelling from their lessons and their rules felt integral to my independence/happiness/future—what could it have done for me to see my father as myself? Just as willful? Just as ready for adventure? All the traits I wielded like a sword twenty years later, looking at home on the face I stole when I was born.
A drawing of a bookshelf with books. Text reads: I wish I could recreate these memories with him. I wish I could hug him again. At first I hid this photo away. Now I sit next to it, hoping the ghost of his arm clothed in a black suit would cross back over to haunt me with a hug.
A panel split with a diagonal line. One half shows leafless trees at night, the other half shows leafless trees during the day. Text reads: I read last night that some people feel like the same person from three years old to seventy-nine years old. I am not quite able to blink that idea into focus. To be the same after loss, to be the same until death, to decay to be the only change seems false.
A drawing of a person in a pink circle lying on their back, with aerial drawings of them painting and drawing. Text reads: After the end, new life bursts forth. A reality that feels as cruel ad it is hopeful. The story of my dad's life that, kept guarded when I was a child, unfolds in front of me in adulthood. Now that the archive surrounding him feels finite, I'm recording what I have left, capturing everything I can remember, and asking about everything I can't.
A comics panel split down the middle. In one half, a person writes on paper at a desk. In the other half, the person walks near leafless trees and looks at a squirrel. Text reads: Hoping to keep my him close. Hoping my memories will stay fresh with the many cycles of winter yet to come.

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Amanda Dibando Awanjo
Amanda Dibando Awanjo is a researcher, educator, and illustrator. She completed her PhD in Critical Cultural Studies in Literature at the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. Her research examines the role of Black women and girls as crafters of radical Black futurity through early 20th-century children’s media. Her artistic work sees her exploring her own world-building surrounding themes of grief, memory, and healing. Her art has been published in Taint Taint Taint Magazine, Puff Puff, and The Black Joy Project.

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