The American Mourning

So recently due to unfortunate events within my family, I have taken notice of how it is we as Americans grieve to those close to us and those we care about. For the sake of society we send flowers, cards of condolences, make a donation to a charity in the name of the deceased.

To a friend who has lost of loved one, we offer our prayers, our support, and a shoulder to cry on. All of which give those in grieving great comfort and does indeed provide the support so desperately needed. As I have learned these past couple of days, it is necessary for one to cry and mourn, to be with family and those who can celebrate the life of those who have passed.

In contrast, when all life gives you is death, sickness, and misfortune you result in becoming numb. The pain can no longer be differentiated from daily life. A friend had sent this to me a while back, and I thought back to it a number of times the past couple days...



The tenacity of the Congolese both impressed and confused the hell out of me. In America we made mourning such a public affair, poured over the virtues of the dead, and placed great significance on dates remembering them. It wasn’t like that here. Despite everything that happened in those weeks, I’d yet to see mothers wail over their dead in public, or children cry at all for that matter. I’d certainly see it later, but here the trauma was so malignant it had ravaged everything soft inside and left them numb.

I remember the way the man from Drodro had described how gunboys kicked his six-month-old baby in the air and sliced her in half with a machete. How they rounded up the rest of his kids and butchered them in the yard. He’d watched it all from is window, yet when he told the story, you’d think he was recounting something he’d read in a newspaper.
“This happens all the time,” the woman in the yellow dress had told me during the gun battle.

Ravage was a disease perched constantly in the corner, and hunger was part of growing up. They endured because it was all they knew. In Congo, people just died, and over the next five years, the war would kill them at the rate of twelve hundred per day.



--
Peace.

Steph