UCHENNA ONYISHI

Stay With Me ends like death; and though what was presumed dead had risen, I cannot help but continue to mourn. Because when something dies and comes back to life, it brings with it the stench of death. I wish Akin and Yejide, husband and wife, had shared the same hug she gave their daughter, Rotimi. Akin deserved it—or needed it. He had not only protected Yejide’s memory after she abandoned her family at the news of their daughter’s illness, but he had also nurtured, in their daughter, a love for her while she ran from the grim reality of losing a fourth child. This ending left me with an ache, not for the loss of love but for the absence of closure, a quiet despair that haunts both the characters and the reader.

Reading Stay With Me during a period of personal transition magnified its emotional resonance. The world, as I knew it, was coming to an isolating end. I had just left my parents’ home in Enugu for my sister’s place in Abuja, to begin the process of returning to China, carrying with me a mustard seed of hope I had dug up from my mother’s overgrown garden. A year earlier, I had given up on myself. It was with this fragile hope that I read Adébáyọ̀’s novel, and I was left reeling at Yejide’s apparent ingratitude toward Akin at the book’s conclusion, when she was reunited with her presumed-dead daughter, Rotimi (a Yoruba name with a meaning that ties back to the book’s title). Despite all that had happened—the lies, betrayals, and deaths—I imagined, for the characters, a necessary reconciliation, an immaculate conception, free of sin, that I now understand I needed more than they did.

Yejide’s refusal to acknowledge Akin’s sacrifices, his care for their daughter, and his efforts to preserve her memory raises critical questions. Can her choice be seen as a necessary assertion of her agency, or does it leave the story emotionally incomplete? And does Adébáyọ̀’s decision to withhold resolution strengthen the novel’s themes of loss and the enduring scars of betrayal in love, or does it deprive readers of the closure they—like Akin—need?

At the end of the book, when Yejide finally makes it to the funeral of Akin’s father, thanks to the invitation she received from him, at their daughter’s request, she makes a poignant observation: Yejide observed that Akin’s hope had endured. In the face of her disappearance, he had bought himself grace by raising a daughter he could present to her as currency for his redemption. Nonetheless, Yejide understood this performance better than anyone else. She had been complicit in the illusions that had sustained their marriage and, therefore, was aware that while Akin had genuinely intended to raise their daughter well, he had also been keenly aware of the value of his well-performed fatherhood. His hope had endured, but so had his desire to control the perception of things that were most proximate to him.

Adébáyọ̀ masterfully weaves these observations into the story through the alternating first-person narratives of Yejide and Akin in the final chapters. This allows the reader to closely spectate as the heightening suspense and hopefulness of their reunion cools into a measured detachment when the moment of confrontation finally arrives.

“Under the canopies, everything is yellow and green. Green tablecloths, yellow satin covers with green bows for the chairs. I sit down on the first seat I can find under the canopy that has your name on it; there are over a thousand guests here. You must have spent a lot of money, but it is not showing as well as it should. Everyone at this table is complaining, no one has been served anything. Not even a bottle of water.” (Stay With Me, Adébáyọ̀ 294)

In this scene, Adébáyọ̀ subtly invites the reader to participate in the decision that Yejide ultimately faces. A funeral does not demand a thousand guests. Such a gathering does not honor the departed, instead, it exists to allow the thousand to behold the thousand.

This simple line—“not even a bottle of water”—ends Yejide’s observation with quiet yet cutting clarity. Water, a simple and universal gesture of hospitality, is absent despite the grand display. It is a powerful metaphor for the trust Akin denied her from the very beginning of their relationship by withholding the truth about his infertility. The absence of water becomes emblematic of Akin’s inability to provide what was most essential: honesty and trust.

Stay With Me is a tragic narrative of love that is tested by cultural pressures, personal flaws, and devastating loss. In its world, children are not the only ones powerless in the face of death. In Akin, a selfish hope endures; in Yejide, resilience the size of a mustard seed germinates. Yet the same cannot be said for their marriage. It is difficult for a marriage to survive infidelity between a wife and her husband’s brother—impossible when that infidelity was orchestrated by the husband himself, in a desperate attempt to salvage his dignity.

The ending rejects an easy resolution. Yejide’s embrace of Rotimi is a moment of redemption, but it is a redemption that excludes Akin. This exclusion feels unjust, yet it is this very absence that lends the conclusion its depth. Adébáyọ̀ does not offer closure but rather an honest portrayal of the fractures that remain even after healing begins. We carry the scent of death with us, even as we find ways to live again. 

Adébáyọ̀’s novel leaves us in a state of mourning—not just for what is lost but for what might have been. Yet, this mourning is not despair; it is a quiet, enduring hope that even in brokenness, meaning can be found within ourselves, with closed eyes.