the sounds of sadness

As the coffin dropped into the ground, a slow deep wail filled the silent air as if a swirling wind had brought it up from the grave.  A moan that could be felt stirring deep down in my soul.  The sound of mourning.  I look out across the graveyard built on the slope of Freetown’s hillside in Wilberforce, named for the man who fought to bring Africa back her people, freed, as the mass of people, all dressed in their finest white, surrounding the hole that was now being filled in with earth begin to disperse, making their way down between the grave sites.  The reality of life and death in this country is as fluid as the people walking among the headstones.  In a country where the life expectancy is only 41 years (risen from the lowest in the world in the last three short years) the leading causes of death are from easily preventable and treatable conditions, Anthony Jr. didn’t even make it to the cut off point.  At 38 years he left this world with the gift of two beautiful young boys (2 years and 5 months) and a beautiful young wife (only 21 years) who now must battle the hardships of living in one of the poorest countries in the world, alone. 

Anthony Jr. was one of our night guards.  He would stay awake all night to ensure I got to sleep without worry, without fear.  He was quiet and soft-spoken, with a youthful face and timid smile.  He would bundle up each night as if snow was in the forecast and I would greet him each morning in my athletic gear and tank top to go out for a run, he in his zipped jacket, stocking cap, gardening gloves and socks pulled up over the bottom of his trousers.  This is the image I will hold in my heart of Jr. and a smile will always spread across my lips.
 

Janet and I trekked across a deep crevasse littered with makeshift homes of corrugated iron dodging the children running and playing football or fetching water.  We slipped and slid down one side and up the other to greet Jr.’s wife and mother only a few days after he passed.  Osha, osha.  The krio word for I am sorry.  What else is there to say?  We sit for a while, in silence.  I smile at little Anthony, Jr’s namesake, and make a face that makes him laugh.  Janet discusses the best way we can support them and then we make the trek back - leaving a woman with sorrow and fear engraved deep into her eyes as she anticipates a life she does not know how to live.  With a baby at her breast and a child on her hip, her deeply furrowed brow makes her look years beyond her age.  Her mother-in-law offering what little comfort she can amidst her own grieving until she must go back to her village to attend to her other children. 

At only 38, Jr. complained of intense stomach pain one day while at our compound and Janet took him to the hospital.  Emergency surgery for a ruptured intestine was determined his need. 

Yet while emergency surgery translates to hope in our language – the connotation reflects a fearful unknown in this one.  Emergency surgery itself could easily kill him.  Recovery in an inadequately cleaned facility could kill him as well. The risk of surgery practically equals the risk without.

No one is sure why he died.  No autopsy will be done, no information from the doctor disclosed.  But that is the way most pass here.  No one knows for certain the cause. 

But while death is far too frequent, it doesn’t make the mourning easier to bear, it doesn’t change the hardship for those left behind. 

The service was beautiful.  His image preserved in pure, loving memories.  His creator praised in pure, loving choruses.  The words said, the hymns sung, carried him to the site on the hillside—enshroud in a white cloud of those who loved him—to where he will lay, looking out over his city, his family, forever.