Yet Will I Praise Him

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