The Voice of Pain

Once you hear it, you can never forget the sound of a wailing woman. It is the audible voice of pain, the retching of the heart. Infant and child mortality steals many lives in Africa. It is a thief that permits miniature coffins to be sold on the roadside next to the potatoes and cabbage. Infant mortality is easily thought of as a statistic until you gaze upon the tiny figure of the immortal. In the west, we have the expectation that someone will live until their 70’s. In Africa, people call it a miracle if a child sees their 5th birthday. I prefer my culture’s way of thinking even if it is a bit naive. The death of a child will never be normal for me or acceptable.

This past weekend I was asked to give the congregational prayer during the main service at church. I had heard during announcements that a baby had died that morning in the hospital and the mother was still there sick herself. Upon entering the back room preparing to enter the sanctuary awaiting the que of the all familiar tune regardless of the language it is sung in, Open My Eyes, Lord, to my left sat a baby coffin – empty but ready to be filled. Just the sight of this solemn symbol of death made my stomach uneasy.

The melody started ushering us inside and I didn’t have time to contemplate the sight before me. After the opening prayer and hymn, my peripheral vision to the left caught sight of a room full of women. Laying there rested a very still and perfect baby. Perhaps the baby is just sleeping, I thought. It only took me a few minutes to realize this was the very precious child that had exited this world and it’s mother’s arms only a few hours prior. The fact that this little being didn’t move in an hours time and was clothed in probably it’s whole wardrobe and two blankets in 90* heat confirmed my initial assumption.

At the end of the main service, the funeral commenced without the presence of the father, as he already died months prior, or the mother as she herself lied in a hospital bed to ill to attend her own child’s funeral. The empty coffin easily swallowed up the innocent body. The hymns of mourning and the tears of grief flowed. Sitting there, I couldn’t help but feel as though this small child is departing this world alone. The church was filled with other people who loved and cared for this infant but not the the same degree of the mother’s. Her absence was a weight in my heart – the one’s whose arms greeted this new life with joy and the arms that were forced to let go in premature death.

The funeral continued with a procession to the cemetery. The small coffin was placed on a motorbike followed by the mourning mass on foot and chanting choir to the freshly dug jungle grave site 5 kilometer’s away. Today, a sweet lifeless child rests awaiting the opportunity to actually live.



As I witnessed all of this, in many ways I felt like just an observer, removed from it all. Of course there were words that were spoken, cultural practices that I didn’t understand but the reality of death transcends all differences and the loss of life, especially a child, is horrific no matter what background you represent. I was surrounded by physical pain and suffering and I found it challenging to connect to. Normally I am quite empathetic and all too easily feel the pain of those around me. Has something died in me as well ? Have I been desensitized ? These questions in and of themselves horrified me. Then I realized, in some ways I envied this baby. He only knew the joy expressed in his birth, the protection of love, and now the overwhelming display of affection and grief in his loss. Of course he didn’t get the opportunity to experience the other joys in this life but those also come at a cost of significant pain. This child entered this world innocent and departed innocent, only marred by the grip of death – which is inevitable for all. He does not carry the scars this world so easily wounds us with. I was reminded that this is how we were meant to be : perfect, innocent, unscathed. Tossed around, battered, and suffering is not natural and it should never be considered as such. We can only endure for a short period of time.

I didn’t exactly grieve the same way as everyone else who attended this event thus provoking my initial self-questioning but I did grieve for the human race as a whole. The death of a child I didn’t even know brought a piece of me to life. It revived in me the consciousness that being jaded is not natural ; death is not natural ; and pain is not natural. But hope is. Hope is the only thing that keeps us going day in and day out. Hope is the only thing that can allow a mother to release the body of her deceased infant – hope that she will hold that child again, healthy and alive. And at the end of the day, hope is the reason I do what I do – the belief that somehow, someway things can and will be different.