How we mourn...

I haven’t been to many funerals in my 36 years of living. My Grandpa died in 2003 and I flew to Queensland from California so I could be present with my grieving family. I really went for my Nanna. And my Dad. I had loved my Grandpa but he was a crotchety old man and his rough exterior made him difficult for non-relations to tolerate. When he died, I had to be with my family, we had to hold each other and cry, sharing memories through blurry eyes. 

Today, I went to my first funeral in Malawi. Most people here know death as a part of life, too real, too close to home, too many lost lives in each village. Today a young woman of 25 was buried beyond the blue gum forest, just up the hard packed red earth trail from her parent’s village. Hundreds of people gathered, following each other one by one to the gravesite, looking like a line of ants.

the march to the gravesite

Maggie had delivered a baby on Thursday night. Placenta Acreta. Hysterectomy. Complications from post-surgical care. Friday morning, she was dead. Her baby was nearby, searching for milk.

Today, the village came together to bury Maggie.

Arriving just before noon, we found the mother of Maggie under a mango tree. Surrounded by relatives, who were holding her hands as she lay flat on the ground. Chitengi’s of all colors and patterns were wrapped around the women who assembled while the men sat side by side in clusters just beyond them. Maggie’s mother saw us, sat up, and through deep sobs, embraced us. Drawing Maggie’s mother to us for connection started a rumbling of anguish around her. We had brought recognition again to the mother’s loss. Thirty women surrounding the mother, all closely entwined were reaching for the corners of their chitengis and wiping their tears with great effort from their eyes.  There wasn’t a dry chitengi for miles.

The Dorcas women (Seventh Day Adventist women’s ministry team) began the service as they lined up outside Maggie’s parents home. Outside the home where her body now lay in a casket.

Maggie’s mother was escorted from under the mango tree to the shaded tent just outside her village home. Just outside the home where her youngest daughter lay still, never to wake again.

Maggie was brought out of the mud-brick house, her white coffin shuffled through a line of singing Dorcas ladies, each trying to hold her piece of the weight as it passed. I was sitting with the women, not far from Maggie’s mother. There was a constant murmuring, a weeping, a muted wailing that at any moment would throb to a loud cry.

Men, one at a time, would pop up amid the crowd like a meerkat surverying the plains and say their piece. The donations roll was read, the call for understanding and acceptance given, and a rousing sermon by a fine young pastor challenged the village to hold on to the Hope in the Bible. To the Hope that one day we would all see Maggie again. He joked, “you’ll get an SMS on your phone to say she is looking for you in the Kingdom.”

While an Acappella group sang a song about ‘seeing each other in the morning’, a distant shriek began, “Maggie, where are you?” and grew in volume as the young women, the friends of Maggie came closer. They pressed through the crush of people, brushing by with slight touches, as they goaded Maggie to respond from the dead. “Maggie, Maggie, what has happened to you, Maggie?” They were crying as they implored a response they knew they wouldn’t receive. The kind of crying that when you hear it, you wonder if life will ever come right again for those feeling that type of pain. The pain that lingers in your heart, long after the last shovel has thrown dirt over the coffin.

But there was something so poignant about the way the people were mourning. About the way they let each other mourn. I had a real sense that even my tears (although hidden behind my Jackie-O sunglasses) would not have been judged if they had fallen freely from my cheeks. I was sitting among people who knew how to grieve. I was sitting among people who could mourn.

Groups of people sat wherever they could find a patch of soil that wasn’t already taken by the emerging maize crop, a brick burning pile, or another person. Some, enduring the searing midday sun, some strategically placed under a mango tree, heavy with green fruit. Others had brought umbrellas to soften the heat.

Each one had come to mourn.

What does it mean, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted?”

I think I understood that verse for the first time today, as I watched a village band together in grief for a lost daughter, a lost mother, a lost friend. 

There were no Kleenex offered when tears began to fall. There was no restraint on emotion. No one was self conscious of their grief. The sting of loss wasn’t stifled, it wasn’t swept under the rug.

In an African village, in the warm heart of Africa, on a balmy December day, I discovered that when people are mourning, they will be comforted, and that being comforted is a human need to make it through any trial.

We are not alone. We are in this thing called life together.

And we are in this thing called death together too.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

(A beautiful part of a heartbreaking loss)

Matthew 5:4

A few of the hundreds who gathered to say goodbye