L On The Mountaintop Lent Day 37

Several years ago I lived in a very hot foreign land (which I don’t care to name because their surveillance makes other intelligence agencies look like a baby sitting service). The time I spent there was, to date, the most terrifying and painful experience I have ever faced. I felt like every part of what made me me was at war with the belief systems of that place. I underwent a very intense spiritual battle within myself and with the forces around me in order to survive. It is a time I thank God for daily because of how near He was to me and how hard He fought for me. How He changed me during that time was nothing short of a miracle. 

One of the ways He showed me His support and care was the very small circle of friends He surrounded me with during that time. One of my very special people was L (who I will not name due to the nature of this post). She too was teaching English at a school, she too was South African, had dark eyes and brown curly hair and she too was completely appalled by the world in which she found herself. Together we navigated the extremely taxing experiences we had to face - from harassment, to prejudice, to bullying, to sexism. All of which are very common practices in this place. We were both broken by our experiences and yet together we formed a friendship that was one of the only ways we would survive the ordeal. People often mistook her to be my little sister and she was , in many ways, my sister. We celebrated the small victories, we cried together, we panicked together, we watched William and Kate’s royal wedding together - while I languished in the torture of a mini nervous breakdown, we went on adventures together. One of the things we promised each other was that when we finally found ourselves back on South African soil we would find a mountain top and scream a very specific sentence from it. Only she and I know what that sentence is but it is the kind of statement that would have meant immediate imprisonment if we had even vaguely verbalised it on that foreign soil. For us the screaming of this sentence would mean that we were finally free of the very real and oppressive spirit of the place. 

I remember, in the agonies of our extreme homesickness, discussing our dreams for the future. It is a practice that is synonymous with people who find themselves in a world they hadn’t bargained for. We planned our wedding proposals (our boyfriends were back in SA - and we ended up marrying them) and we planned our weddings and we planned our families. We discussed baby names and we mapped out our happily ever afters. It was these dreams (very similar to the ones five year old girls map out for themselves) that kept us going and gave us hope. 

After two very brief teaching stints we managed to find ways out of our teaching contracts and hightailed it home. 

When L came up to embrace me on my wedding day it took all of me not to run with her to the nearest hill and belt out our big revelation. We had survived. And we had found our happily ever afters. 

Over the years we have checked in with each other sporadically but one of the only joys of social media is the fact that we can keep track of the ticking over of time and so I have been aware of the arrival of both her perfect children and she of mine. And this has given me immeasurable joy. 

Yesterday I did my weekly check on Instagram. I have given up FB for Lent but have never been much of an Instagrammer (if that is a term) so I’ve let it be. The first photo that I came across was the magnificent little face of L’s baby boy with a message reading that she misses him so much already. 

And my stomach lurched and I couldn’t breathe. 

I discovered that she lost her baby boy a few days ago. I then contacted her and she had the remarkable courage to tell me her story. Her beautiful boy went to sleep at his nursery school and they couldn’t wake him, he had stopped breathing. He had passed away in his sleep. The autopsy showed that he had had pneumonia - he had caught one of the heinous viruses doing the rounds. And he didn’t have a single symptom. 

The nightmare. 

The one that brings hysteria so close to the surface that your grief becomes more like a scream. I have been so destroyed by this because I know this mother. I’ve known her at her most vulnerable. I know what an exceptional mother she is. I know that she has been loving her children long before they were made flesh. I know that she had names for them. I know that in every moment of their existence she adores them. 

And now she has to face a labyrinth of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ for an interminable time. Unlike the other grief I have had to face over this past Lent period this one is not just the grieving of the loss of a perfect baby boy but grieving the journey I know my precious L now has to face. And when I allow myself into her world for just a moment I have to kick myself up back to the surface because I literally can’t breathe. 

L you have been plunged into a much darker world than the one I faced with you all those years ago. And I do not know when the pinpricks of light will start shining again. My prayer is that you know that you are never, ever alone. I pray that you feel the presence of He who sits beside you in the darkness. You may not be able to see or hear Him right now because the emptiness in your arms is too loud. 

My little sister I will stand on whatever mountain top you need me to stand on and I will scream with you. I will scream the savage song of a mother who has lost her baby. I will scream of the love I know your son felt in you. I will scream of the intense complexities and guilt that comes hand in hand with motherhood. I will scream of your emptiness. I will scream into your silence. 

This is not the happily ever after that we planned. But I know you. I know that your spirit has fought battles against darkness and it has won before. I know that there will be recovery because I know that you are going to fight for it. And most of all I know that you loved your son more than anything in the world, and I know that he knows it too.