we sit together

"is he ok?"
"no, he died"
"of course he did"

it was late in the morning when i went to ask carmenza something. i found her outside of the isolation room, squinting in the sunlight, trying to read the results of a urinalysis she had just done. i ask her if she's busy, or if she can come see one of my staff who is sick. she's busy. she says that the situation in the isolation room is an emergency, and she's afraid the patient is going to die. what's wrong with him? he's having gastrointestinal bleeding and he's going into shock. i assume that he's old, but she tells me that he's only 30. oy. i leave her to her emergency and i eventually head home for lunch. an hour or so later she wanders into the courtyard and i glance up from where i'm zoning on the bed in the livingroom. it's only a day after my brutal day and i'm still not entirely present. "is he ok?" i ask. "no, he died". "of course he did" i say- it seems only fitting in this week that we're having. we have lunch and i head back to the hospital to train my tba's. i arrive back at the women's centre and the waiting area, our usual congregation spot, is empty. "where are the tba's?" i ask joyce, starting to wonder if i have the right day. she tells me that they have gone to sit with his body and i step around the corner and see that the family has taken him to be washed in the large sand lot right beside the women's centre. several woman are sitting in the sand, facing where his body is being washed. joyce looks past me and i turn to see where she is looking. an elderly woman is walking slowly across the sand. she walks with a cane and each step takes effort. she walks alone at an impossibly slow pace. everything about her is dignified. "she is the grandmother" joyce tells me. i almost start to cry merely at the sight of her- even in her grief she is regal. behind her another woman is being half dragged by two women, each clasping one of her arms. "she is the mother" margret whispers, and tells me that she had collapsed upon hearing of his death. the two women take her to a spot just across the field from her son's body and deposit her in the sand. across the field the men are gathered. they have placed stakes in the ground and draped beautiful coloured sarongs around them in order to wash his body in privacy. his mother is sitting alone in the sand and i go sit down in the sand beside her. she looks at me and a tear runs down her cheek. i put my hand on her back and say softly "malesh" (i'm sorry) "malesh". she nods. we sit together. women come and sit around us. one at a time they crawl towards her, touch her, try to speak and end up sobbing. she sits there silently. she keeps looking at me and she looks confused. we sit together. we sit side by side, sometimes touching, sometimes not. at one point she moves her hand towards mine and i reach my hand out to take hers. we sit and look at our hands... they couldn't be more different. mine....pink, soft, smooth. hers.... black, creased, callused. she touches my hand and i trail my finger along hers. she motions towards my sandaled feet. they are covered in dried blood from the awful births the day before. i hadn't had the energy to shower yet. i nod, i know it is there. we sit together. i can feel the sun burning my skin, but i can't leave. everything is silent, except for the sounds of mourning that surround us. she turns to me and says something, but i don't understand what she is saying. i just nod. sometimes she rocks back and forth, but mostly she is still. we sit together. at times she looks over at me and the look on her face is completely vacant. in those moments i wonder where she has gone and if she'll come back. i silently pray for her- i can't imagine a pain worse than losing a child. sometimes she cries and i cry with her. i can't help it- i'm exhausted on every level and i have no reserves to keep any semblence of an emotional guard up. i cry with her, i cry for her, i cry for myself. i am half there with her and half lost in the memory of the day this was my family, my loss, my grief.
the men across from us move into formation to pray. some of the women near us move away to let other women come to his mother. i move back to sit with aicha and joyce. i look around and i see that we are surrounded by a huge crowd of women that contains all of our staff, and most of habillah it seems. i sense that there is something about this death that i'm not getting. aicha tells me. she tells me that this is the third child that this mother will bury this month. one son was killed a month ago, she doesn't know how. her teenage daughter had committed suicide by drinking poison two weeks ago. and now today another son. all in one month. suddenly her silence makes sense. her vacant look. the deadness in her eyes. her collapsing at the news. i would be insane by now if i was her.
a woman near me begins to wail. she is saying something through her sobs. aicha tells me that this was their aunt. she had no children of her own, and had lived with them, helping to raise these children. "our children are gone" she is sobbing, "our children are gone". my tba's surround her, place their hands on her. i can see the grief in their faces as they murmur consolations. the surviving sibling, another brother, has broken down at his brothers body. "my family is dead" he says over and over. the men lift the body, wrapped in a blanket, onto the back of a donkey cart. as it starts to move i feel joyce's hand on my elbow. "stand up" she whispers. we stand. everyone stands. i put my hand on my heart. the donkey cart slowly moves past us. his mother is lifted and dragged behind them. his grandmother begins her slow journey after them.