It was a Tuesday morning when the familiar sound came
drifting through the crack between the top of our walls and the base of the
roof. The inconsolable; the freshly mourning. Boaz has died, the neighbor told me. I knew that he had been
injured in a soccer match. I knew that he had been referred to the hospital. I
knew that he had been sent home. Died?
Yep. We started piecing the puzzle together and concluded that he must have
had some form of internal bleeding that was not attended to.
Since Boaz’s house was right across from the preschool, we canceled
class for three days so as to not disturb the wailers with our painfully
cheerful ABC’s, or maybe so as to not
frighten the wee ones with the fits of sheer grief, whichever happened to be
louder.
It quickly occurred to me that Bronwyn might not be so ok
with funerals any more. She had attended her fair share in her early years, but
now, older, more emotionally aware and empathetic, I wasn’t sure how she would
perceive the descending sadness. This is, after all, the child who could not cope
when Frosty melted and when Cinderella lost her shoe. A little boy is gone and
his mommy can’t even stand up under the weight of sorrow – I wasn’t sure how
that would not shake my sensitive girl.
We sent her to play elsewhere as I sat with the wailers in
the funeral house - as Jeremy prepared the Land Rover to serve as hearse - as
songs and cries of grief waxed and waned. We slept closely that night, hugging
our little girls with a fresh awareness that life is fleeting and precious.
The following day, the boy was to be buried. Jeremy was sent
to the hospital to retrieve the coffin and the body and bring it to the church.
We sat, along with a few hundred others, under the trees, waiting for that familiar
sound of the diesel engine to draw near. As the vehicle pulled closer, the
noise level amongst the people grew and Bronwyn looked at me with concern. Why is everyone crying? Because a little
boy has died, and his mother misses him so very much. When is he coming back? He’s not, baby, he’s going to be with Jesus
now. Oh... Can we have ice cream?
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| the overflow seating |
It was the third of her questions that helped me relax again
as I was clued in to the fact that this was indeed still beyond her, and we
were not likely to have another Frosty or Cinderella-esque melt down. Of course
I was still sad for Boaz and his family. This boy has been a part of our crew
for years and the unnecessary nature of his death made me ill. But as with so
many things, my preoccupation with my own children somehow had the
ability to defer and deflect other reactions. And for that funeral, Bronwyn was
ok, and therefore so was I.
I posted a picture on instagram of my girls on my lap and
the coffin wedged up next to us as we carted it off to the cemetery. She never
asked and I never told her what was in that crushed-velvet-covered box. I was
surprised a bit by the outpouring of sympathetic reactions to that picture.
Clearly the story was heartbreaking, and I did appreciate the solidarity, but
the startled response gave me pause to
remember, oh, our friends don’t know how
normal this is.
It’s not always a boy bleeding out after taking a soccer
ball in the stomach. But it seems to always be some one and some thing. The
same night we buried Boaz, a Musonda grandchild passed away and the mourners
kept mourning and only just shifted to another location. A few days after that,
Bana Louisa’s mother died and no one came to my meeting at the clinic. A few
days later, Bana Ngandwe’s brother died and Bible study got canceled. We have
only attended one of the four funerals in the past two weeks largely because we
lack material and emotional resources to cater to every single family, and
therefore we pick and choose. But the reality remains that we could probably go
to 50 + funerals a year in our community like everyone else does.
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| funeral procession to the burial ground |
Quite honestly, mourning is strangely normal. The domination of death in the village is seen in meeting minutes when three fourths of the absentees are reported to have gone to funerals. Organizations, including our own have not only “sick day” policies but “funeral day” policies a well. We receive more requests for monetary assistance for funerals than we do for business/micro finance. There has never been a team or a visiting volunteer whose work has not somehow been disturbed by an unexpected funeral.
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| towards the cemetery |
That evening after we came home from the burial ground, I
capitalized on the events of the day, taking the opportunity to explain to
Bronwyn about Jesus’s death and what that implied for our own. Jeremy, worrying that I
was breaking the cardinal rule of parenting by answering questions that my
child was not asking, gave me the “stop talking” face and I had to
remind him that he had not been there for Easter when we had to completely
avoid the death preceding the resurrection because our three year old couldn’t
understand and I was determined to use this opportunity to help her figure out
the rest of the gospel.
Jesus died so that we
don’t have to, I told her, among other things. And she sorta nodded and said, ok while slurping her completely-melted-nothing-stays-cold-in-October ice cream. Jeremy pointed out that
she still wasn't getting it, but I’m ok with that because at least she has the
full vocabulary of redemption now. She’s seen the picture, heard the sounds and
she now has the words to grasp that life here is not forever. She has the context for our work’s
great precept: life is hard, God is
merciful, heaven is for sure.
This will only get more real for her. With every funeral,
every coffin and every burial, it gets all the more concrete that life implies a final hour. This
interaction with death is a part of the third-culture-kid package of life
lessons that are not at all desirable but somehow a blessing all the same.
I’m thankful that my children have never ending
opportunities to come face to face with ultimate reality. It is the hardship of
the now, juxtaposed with the mercy of God and the assurance of heaven for those
who believe that keeps us here. And I want them to get that. I want them to live the same, where they consider all
their years as a mere breath and endeavor to do something significant with them.
I want them to know that death is NOT
the worst thing that could happen to a person – death without knowing Christ is.
And so in plain view and along side our sticky-faced kids,
we champion LIFE. We push and sweat and labor till we just can't anymore - all to the end
that people would know LIFE and know it to the full. We mourn with those who
mourn. Truly, deeply. There is nothing neat or sterile about it. We also teach/sing/show
again and again that to live is CHRIST and to die is GAIN. Because so help me
goodness our blondy MK’s might be totally weird and awkward for many of their
experiences here, but if nothing else they will have a rock solid theology of
life and death…
…and that is a gift greater than all the ice cream
in the world.
