NO!!!!
This can’t be true…
Oh God, no! This can’t be true.
Motherhood unfinished,
Broken hearts in a broken world.
I have no words…
Kindness seems barren,
Healing far away
Oh God, no:
This can’t be true…
Say something! Answer!
How can You be silent
In this time when we most
Need Your voice, Your comfort?
God of the broken-hearted…?
I have no words…
Love feels far away
Anger brings no comfort
Now is the time to be
Emmanuel – God with us*
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We were both identical twins. We were both “Mama kaThulani”. Ntombi loved fiercely and laughed joyfully…and with a very naughty twinkle in her eye. When she sang, spiritual strongholds would crumble and fall. She spoke her mind. She brought wisdom to restless spaces. She fought for the marginalised and the oppressed. She dreamed and worked towards a home of her own – she did not see that dream come to fruition. She dreamed and worked towards caring for children who were lost and vulnerable – she worked so hard and dreamed so big, but her body did not last long enough to see that dream become a reality.
At Easter, after a few short months of fatigue and crescendoing pain, she was in hospital…in the very season where we remember that life triumphs over death, were told there was nothing more that could be done save making her comfortable and giving her love in her last few days.
She was gone before Ascension Day even came around.
The day that she passed away – 26 May – there was a berg wind – a wind that brought heat and restlessness on what should have been a cold, Winter day. The weather reflected perfectly the discordant, restlessness of my heart. On that date, 20 years ago, I first became “Mama kaThulani”. My own Thulani came home. “Thulani Unknown”, the boy with the “DNR”** on his folder, the silent baby who had stopped crying because crying hadn’t elicited a caring response from anyone in the first 5 months of his life – this Thulani came home. After being told there was nothing more that could be done, save giving him love in what was supposed to have been a very short life, this Thulani came home to a mother, aunts, uncles, Grandparents, life, love and flourishing. As we left the hospital on that dark wintery evening 20 years ago, one of the nurses yelled, “Hey, Thulani! You are not unknown anymore!” My heart still bursts with joy as I write that line.
And now, 20 years later, on the same date, as we prepared to celebrate, another young Thulani had lost his mom. A diagnosis of “there is nothing we can do” and a prognosis of “only a few last days” had not been reversed…there had not been the miracle we had hoped and prayed for, even as we saw her body continue to crumble. Two more boys had been left without a mother, a mother without her child, a twin without the other heart that had beaten with hers since they had been knitted together in their mother’s womb, siblings had lost a sister, we had lost a dear friend, sister and co-conspirator and the world had lost a nurturer, a warrior, a protector, a gifted musician, a carer, someone who sees those who remain invisible to most, an encourager… and so much more…so much more.
She was buried the day before Pentecost…Pentecost: the day so long ago that we all became one family, one body – the day our hearts were set up to be shattered and broken into tiny shards again and again as we chose to be one, to be knitted in with others who we would lose in this still-broken world. The day we were sent the Comforter…
Today, 11 June, would have been Ntombi’s birthday. I learned the date off by heart through the last few weeks of looking at hospital files, applying for hospice care and living with the hope that she would see one more year of life being celebrated with her twin. I definitely have not found the words yet, but I wanted to write something because I don’t know if there will ever come a time when this will make sense or I will be at peace with her life ending so early. So I decided to write, but I don’t really even know how to end this…
Ntombi: I love you, I miss you, my heart is broken over losing you. I will love your boys, I will remember you with delight and joy and I will work towards your dreams of every person having a place to call home, every child having a family of their own and every person who is yet unseen to be seen, to be found, to be treasured and placed back into community and belonging.
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*This was written as part of a time of lament in our community. Apparently the book of Lamentations is a collection of Acrostic poems – poems that begin with the first letter of the alphabet and then each line or stanza which follows begins with the next letter in the alphabet. Eugene Peterson wrote that, although grief is spontaneous and so it might be surprising for it to reflect a “structure” of any sort, the gift of an acrostic form is that you leave no detail out, no “letter unwritten” – the repetition of the acrostic form gives an opportunity to go over and over your grief until finally it is fully expressed…or as fully expressed as is possible. I based my lament on the letters of Ntombi’s full name…I think I will have to write these letters out again and again over the next weeks, months and years if I ever hope to have given this full expression, but it was a start. There was more written for this lament than the opening lines in this blogpost, but it went to surprising places which would have to be explained with even more words, so I thought I would leave it there.
** DNR – Do not resuscitate. This is written on a patient’s folder when they are thought to be near death: if their heart stops, or they stop breathing, the DNR instruction guides hospital carers not to try any life-saving intervention, but rather just make the patient comfortable and let death happen. After Thulani became “the boy who lived”, we fought for months to get that off his folder in case he ever landed in hospital again!!
From the Outer Limb 