The Cries That Echo Within my Heart

Writing by Jes on Tuesday, 3 of March , 2009 at 11:25 am

I held her hand as she wept. Her cries echoed in my ear and I didn’t know what to do or what to say. It was like the silence was a blanket not of comfort but a shelter so she could scream.  The women sat around us, with an older one tapping me so I could hug the young mother from behind her instead of in the dirt where I sat.  It was then when I noticed the sand had become mud, mud from the tears and the ground where she sat all day wailing, grieving the loss of her daughter who had just kissed her cheeks that morning for breakfast.

I wanted to be embarrassed, I was a stranger here.  To this woman, to this pain and I couldn’t do anything but offer hushed prayers from my heart pressing into her back because I knew of no words to say.  Her daughter was alive that morning, only complaining of a headache but running out with her friends to play in the peeking of the dawn.  By mid-morning she passed out, by noon she was dead and buried only two hours later. 

There was no running to a doctor, no medical facility nearby no car that could rush them to their destination.  Even they could the condition of the road would make any emergency have to wait for traffic to clear through.  No money for a proper burial and wives tales running rapid caused the child to be buried within the hour.  An hour that didn’t allow the family to say good-bye to the two year old’s face. 

The mother sits in my lap distraught, her only daughter gone.  Disappeared from her world with no cause.  There is no disease to be cited, no warning sign, no idea except a headache that became the prelude to her death.  The mother lost her only hope in this world, a world with nothing to grip on except the idea of tomorrow a tomorrow that is promised to the children and her baby is gone.

So I sit there as long as I could, taking my place in the grieving circle as the women watched and the children sat and all stayed quiet to show that they cared.  The circle widen as more of the neighbors came by only baring their hearts as the mother went through the phases of grief.  For a people who have nothing, no bread, no running water, they had humanity and heart.

There is no way to end this one, I struggle to find a cliché or phrase.  But the truth is that life hit and it was unfortunate, tragic even and there isn’t a word or a moment that can bring it all together.  I was a part of her comfort during her pain, I pray to God that my purpose was within his will at that time and place.

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