My grandmother died on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday afternoon my phone had become a small chapel of blue bubbles. It is well. It is well with your soul. E pele, omo mi. It is well. Some messages came with praying-hands emojis, some with voice notes I still haven’t opened, some with the Yoruba greeting that means sorry, sorry, sorry stacked three times like a wall against bad news. I read every one. I replied to none.
That silence is the thing I keep turning over. Not the funeral logistics, not the flights I didn’t book, not the WhatsApp group where my aunties argued about whether the burial should be in Ibadan or Lagos. The silence. The reply I never sent.
What ‘It Is Well’ Actually Means
In Yoruba condolence, it is well is not a claim about circumstances. It is a theological posture. It comes from the same root as the hymn — It is well with my soul — but in the diaspora Pentecostal register I grew up in, it functions as a kind of verbal anointing. You say it over someone the way you might lay a hand on their head. You are not saying the thing is fine. You are saying the thing is held.
That distinction matters because it explains why the messages kept coming. In the logic of the church, her death was a promotion, not a tragedy. It is well was the correct thing to say. It was also, for me, the hardest thing to receive.
There is a particular loneliness in being condoled in a language of certainty when you are not certain. I did not doubt God. I doubted the arithmetic. The messages assumed a settled grief. Mine was not settled. It was still moving.
The Paperwork That Runs Alongside the Grief
Here is the part nobody puts in the condolence message: the administration. When someone dies in the UK, the doctor confirms the death, a medical examiner checks the cause, and then you register the death within five days of being told you can — eight in Scotland. That five-day clock includes weekends and bank holidays. If you need more time, you have to tell the register office immediately. You get a green form for burial or cremation, and the funeral cannot proceed without it. The GOV.UK guide on what to do after someone dies lays this out step by step, and it is worth reading before you need it, because grief does not improve your ability to absorb bureaucratic instructions.
If the death happened abroad, the rules change. You can only register a death abroad in the UK if it happened on or after 1 January 1983, and if the person died on a foreign ship or aircraft, the death must be registered in the country where the ship or aircraft is registered. The GOV.UK page on registering a death is the starting point, though the specific guidance for registering a death abroad was not available to me when I checked, so I am not going to pretend to give you a checklist I cannot verify.
What I can tell you is that the paperwork and the messages arrive in the same week. The register office does not care that you are also fielding it is well texts. The medical examiner does not care that you have not slept. The two systems — the bureaucratic and the communal — run on different clocks, and you are the only person standing in both.
Why I Didn’t Reply
I have tried to explain this to people who are not from a diaspora church background, and it comes out sounding either cold or broken. It was neither. It was something closer to overload.
Every reply I drafted felt like a lie. Thank you, it is well — but it was not well. Thank you for your prayers — but I did not know what I believed about prayers that week. She is in a better place — but I wanted her in Ibadan, in her chair, with her radio. The condolence messages asked me to perform a version of grief I had not yet arrived at. Replying would have meant agreeing to that performance. So I didn’t.
Cruse Bereavement Support notes that grief affects us emotionally, physically, and mentally, that there is no right way to grieve, and that there are no set stages or time limits. They also describe complicated or prolonged grief as what happens when someone becomes stuck or is still unable to cope after many months. I am not diagnosing myself. I am saying that the pressure to reply it is well when it is not well is a pressure to skip the part where you are not well. And that part, according to every bereavement service I have read, is not a detour. It is the road.
The Hidden Economy of Condolence
There is an economy to condolence messages, and it is not only emotional. In Yoruba diaspora families, condolence is also a form of accounting. Who called. Who came. Who sent money. Who sent a message but not money. Who sent money but not a message. Who sent the message late. Who sent it to the wrong person. Who did not send it at all.
My grandmother’s death activated all of this. The WhatsApp group became a ledger. Aunties who had not spoken in years were suddenly coordinating. Cousins I had never met were asking for the account number. The it is well texts were not just comfort; they were entries in a record I did not know I was keeping. Every message I did not reply to was, in that ledger, a blank space. I knew it. I let it stand.
This is the part of migration that nobody warns you about. You are not just far from the funeral. You are far from the system that tells you what your grief is supposed to look like. You are receiving the condolence without the context that makes it legible. You are being held by a community whose arms are on the other side of a screen.
What I Would Say Now
I still have the messages. I have not deleted them. Some nights I read them and they feel like a net. Some nights they feel like a demand. Both are true.
If I could send the reply now, it would not be it is well. It would be something closer to: Thank you for holding me. I am not there yet. I will be. But I am not there yet. That is not a rejection of the condolence. It is an honest receipt of it.
The Yoruba have a saying that a person is not dead as long as they are remembered. I do not know if that is literally true. I know that my grandmother is remembered every time I read those messages and do not reply. I know that the silence is not empty. It is full of everything I could not say in the language I was being offered.
Maybe that is its own kind of it is well. Not the settled kind. The kind that is still moving.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to register a death in the UK?
You must register the death within five days of getting confirmation from the medical examiner’s office that you can register it. In Scotland, it is eight days. This includes weekends and bank holidays. If you need more time, you must tell the register office immediately. The GOV.UK guide has the full step-by-step process.
Can I register a death that happened in Nigeria with the UK authorities?
You can only register a death abroad in the UK if it happened on or after 1 January 1983. If the person died on a foreign ship or aircraft, the death must be registered in the country where the ship or aircraft is registered. The GOV.UK page on registering a death is the official starting point, though specific guidance for registering a death abroad was not available when I checked.
Is it normal to not reply to condolence messages after a death?
Cruse Bereavement Support notes that there is no right way to grieve and no set stages or time limits. Not replying is not a moral failure. It is a sign that you are still in the part of grief that has not yet found words. If you are still unable to cope after many months, Cruse describes this as complicated or prolonged grief, and it may be worth seeking support.
What does ‘it is well’ mean in a Yoruba Christian context?
It is a theological posture rather than a claim about circumstances. It comes from the hymn It is well with my soul and functions as a verbal anointing — you are not saying the situation is fine, you are saying it is held. In the diaspora Pentecostal register, it is often the correct thing to say, even when the recipient is not yet able to receive it.
