The world is mysterious. And for all our human focus on ideas of fairness, there isn’t a whole lot available in the natural order of things. I’m not depressed, but I am thinking about how hard things happen to people and then happen and then happen.
My dear African friend’s little baby boy Shafi died in utero. He had about three months to go to join us out here in the world, but his little heart was not enough. Kendall and I made the trip up to Seattle to be there when C finished labor. There is no fairness about it. Even though she knew her boy had died, she had to labor to get him out. At the end, she was tired, sore, spent, and heart-broken. We held little Shafi and prayed over him. It did not feel like enough of course, and even as I was doing this, I thought, “How many times will I be here again?” It isn’t that I am sorry for myself. I am young and my years near the deathbeds are just beginning.. I am resigned to that fact. I am ready for this work, even. It is her though. She walked out of the valley of death in the Congo. I love her so, I wish that her journey in those dark places was over.
But that isn’t the way it goes and we have no guarantees in this life. Death is constantly with us. I just wish it would clear out of places that it has already visited too much.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
I don’t know her, but my thoughts and prayers are with her! I can’t even start to imagine what she is going through right now.
December 18th, 2009
I am so sorry for C and her husband. My thoughts and prayers are with them.
December 19th, 2009
What a sorrowful experience. C gave so much of herself to her son in these months, not only in body but in expectation and I’m sure in the joy of her son’s potential.
My niece Kelly would have turned 20 in October of this year, if she had been born alive (she was lost at 8 months in utero), and while time has healed much of that grief, we still visit her grave and think of her and who she would have been and grieve for that, still.
I’m very sorry for C’s and her husband’s loss.
December 21st, 2009
I thought of Kelly so much during this experience. I think I even told C that burying Shafi was a good thing— that he didn’t have to be born “at the right time” to deserve a burial too, that I knew of a family who had the same thing happen and they buried their child. It was good to reflect on how common this way, not just the couple’s pain, but something that many in our community share.
December 22nd, 2009
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