Thursday afternoon I stood in the office
with five-month-old Abiudi in my arms, laughing with his mother about how big
and healthy he had gotten.
Friday afternoon I stood at his bedside in
the local hospital. I held his mother’s hand and prayed with her as we watched
him slip away from us.
Today I stood beside his grave, the tiny
coffin lying in the black mud of the hillside. I pulled my kanga over my head
to cover my tears as the soil thudded down. The sound was so final. My kanga
couldn’t hide the fact that I was shaking.
He was buried in the same hat as he was
wearing the first time I saw him back in January, not yet two months old and
weighing barely two kilos. He’d been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia.
His young mother too was malnourished and generally unwell, so shy that she wouldn’t
speak more than two or three words in a row, all in a whisper. Her sister had
been looking after her baby previously and she was yet to bond with him. I visited
them at least twice a day for the month they were in hospital with food and
medicine, formula for the baby and safe water to drink. The day they were
discharged was a happy one. We made the half-hour drive to her sister’s house
along a narrow mountain road, Theresia fairly flying down the steep hill to the
house when we arrived.
I watched over the last few months as they
grew, rejoicing with them over every kilo that both Theresia and her baby gained
and delighting in the bond that was growing between them. Early last month Abiudi smiled at me for the first time
and I was so surprised that his mother laughed. It was a milestone for them
both.
I have struggled these past two
days. Guilt and grief and shock and questioning and wondering and sorrow and tears and
most of all, hurt for a mother with a full heart but empty arms.
And yet will I praise Him.
As we left the burial on the mountain the
sun was low in the sky and we could see all of Monduli District spread out
before us. Hills and fields, crops of maize and golden wheat and to the left of
us, a valley filled with mist and sunlight. Oh what beauty in the midst of such
pain. The sound of the family singing as they filled the grave echoed in my
heart. “Haleluya. Tutaonana.” Hallelujah. We will see each other again.
Oh how I long for that day.
xoxo,
-Hannah
