The translation of grief...

            Around mid-night, already struggling in my attempts to fall asleep,  I heard my landlady unlock her door and enter the house. Surprised by the late hour, I lay in bed listening. As the hours continued into the night and on to the early morning my slumbering attempts were met with the sounds of voices, wood chopping and chairs being moved. Two AM into three AM and so on, I listened as people gathered outside our house around a camp fire talking. Curious and frustrated by my inability to sleep and to find sleep amidst their conversation, I tossed and turned questioning everything. Why were these people, Rwandans, whose lives generally seem to revolve around the amount of useable daylight that can be found each day, awake at two AM, having a bonfire?

            Her husband was sick for about a week. I heard him coughing at night through the thin door that separates my home and their living room. Reports came to me that they were traveling to the hospital 45 minutes away. Talking with Mama Diane, my landlady, we discussed his illness. Sick in the stomach, coughing, and headaches were some of the symptoms she mentioned before they left for the hospital. Before wishing her a safe journey, I complimented her Rwandan dress and her newest hairstyle. The next time I saw her was the day after her husband, the community “umusaza” or old man, passed away. Also the father of a co-worker of mine, we were informed in the morning meeting at the health center that “Papa Peace (Peace being my co-worker) died last night,” something I already knew or at least guessed, based on the campfire vigil held outside my house.

            As strange as it may sound, I like to think a have a pretty good ability to deal with loss and interact with others dealing with loss. I feel like I’ve learned what to say, how to approach loss with people and how to help them. Maybe these are false assertions about myself. But now I find myself attempting to tip-toe out of my house to avoid Mama Diane, to avoid confrontation of the situation. Uncomfortable with the complete lack of knowledge on how to help with this kind of loss and in the appropriate way. Although I really didn’t know the man, and unfortunately my first interaction with him was slightly creepy, I am not overly saddened by his loss, but I find myself sitting here with a familiar ache in my chest.

I sit helpless amongst some 15-20 Rwandans, maybe the 10^th batch of visitors of the day, sitting staring about the living room, showing support. Mama Diane is off in the bowels of the house, wandering outside, greeting other guests. We sit, they serve us Fanta, and we sit. Helplessly I wonder what this is supposed to mean, how this helps, what Mama Diane really needs. Public displays of emotion being relatively frowned upon in this culture, Mama Diane doesn’t cry, she doesn’t seem to show any emotion really. Her six daughters float around the house giving us Fanta, checking on the work in the kitchen, also seemingly emotionless, at least to our Americanized expectations of grief.

I am told the vigil, the guests, will continue for three days, then it will just be the family. Although, I wasn’t particularly close to any of these people, and just moved into this home a month ago, the thin door between our homes masks no sounds. It places me into the middle of their personal lives, feelings and reactions. Uncontrollably, I am involved in the intimacy of their grief, yet have no idea what that means, or what I am supposed to do with it. I feel as though I’m a part of it, but I’m not. Even if there was something I could do, I have no idea what it is, or how to do it.

            Years ago, Felice told me about her support group for parents who’ve lost children. She told me, how other members of the group were seemingly afraid of her when she entered. They looked at their pain of losing one child relative to her losing both her daughters as not equal. They seemed to view their pain as minimal relative to her loss. But Felice said something that has always stuck with me. It was something to the effect of grief being immeasurable. No one person’s grief is greater or less than another’s and we all grieve differently and incomparably. We never have the right to judge someone else’s grief or their grieving process.  

            My experience with grief and mourning is so seemingly diverse to me; between friends, boyfriends, parents, family, and Felice’s family, at one point a second to my own. I’ve experienced friends refusal to talk to me about our loss. I’ve watched people drowning their loss in a drug or booze induced haze. I’ve had friends who talked about it incessantly, about the person, about our memories. I’ve scrap-booked, made mixed CDs of our songs, played all our favorite movies over and over, and helped Felice in a foundation dedicated to the lives of my best friend and her sister. I have been screamed at, belittled, cried to, laughed with, and have done all of those things myself as well. But this experience is new.

To this day, the worst sound I have ever heard is that of Felice crying. The agony and pain of her sobs still resonate within me. I remember sitting on the stairs outside her bedroom, for close to an hour, listening to this sound, a sound so complete of pain, of anguish, that I couldn’t breathe. This sound has stuck with me all this time, and still cripples me to hear it. On the Balinese beach with her and two of my best friends, they held her as she cried into the Indian Ocean, the final resting place of her girls. Feeling uncontrollably and physically ill from this experience, I walked away and sat wrapped within myself, toes digging into the sand, waiting for the pain to stop, waiting for their crying to subside. 

I watch my parents, still brought to tears at times, over the loss of their parents, and their friends, and it wakes a sadness in me as well as a stronger love of them and who they are and continue to become. I have laughed hysterically with my friends over memories of Lindsey. We’ve cried hysterically, we’ve drunken ourselves into feelinglessness.  I’ve even gone so far as to tattoo myself over loss. For a while, loss was all-encompassing in my life, and has contributed immensely in fostering the person I am today. For years I would give myself panic attacks thinking about losing more people. What would I possibly do if I lost my brother, my parents, my friends? I would find myself on a road trip, heading home alone in my car, walking across campus, hyperventilating thinking about the inevitability of loss. Sometimes these “episodes” were so bad I had to stop my car, or sit down before I could function again. Every now and then it still hits me. There is never a day that I don’t miss all the people I love, yet have lost. I wonder what they’d think of me today, what they would do if they were a part of each adventure I take.

Unfortunately, I am becoming accustomed to death and the processes that stem from it, and I think somewhat unfairly at the age of 24. I know what it looks like in so many of its forms. Yet, I find myself lost in translation. As I sit in the living room of my landlady amongst a large group of people, yet feeling so very alone, clueless as to what we are doing, and why we are doing it. I think about what it was like after the plane crash. I remember sitting at Felice’s house, waiting, watching the news, trying to listen, experiencing the emotion of others. Unbelieving, I was hopeful at first, then I was stunned, then I was so emotionally exhausted I barely functioned. I don’t remember throngs of people coming and going in those first few days. Months later however, before the memorial service, I remember a house full of people, vaguely, as I had locked myself in Linds’ room working on projects, only emerging to make a cocktail, maybe steal food, or go to the bathroom.

But in that gathering, people were lively, they were emotional. They told stories of the girls and of their father. They laughed, they cried, they drank themselves into the necessary stupor. I remember bodies of people, but not who they were, they shuffled through the house beneath my Lindsey sanctuary. So I sit here in this room, in Rwanda, watching people from every facet of the community, leaders, farmers, school-teachers and otherwise come and go. The diversity and number attributes, in my eyes, to his importance and value in the community. We sit in the living room of the deceased and I wonder, is this is how Mama Diane needs/wants to grieve. Her face, her interactions, convey nothing, she is seemingly emotionless, yet noticeably exhausted.

When I get up to leave, still unsure if it’s acceptable protocol, I thank her and tell her the typical “ihangane” or be patient. She glances at me and says “Munezero, hari ibibazo”, there are problems. I ask how I can help as this is what I know how to do, and she smiles slightly, I assume at the absurdity of the question. She says to come sing tomorrow, to help hold vigil, and to be here. Tossed into their grief, an unrelenting fly listening on the wall, through the door, I listen helplessly, yet with good-intentions of acclimating, of being a part of this part of their culture. I feel lost though… this is not how I have experienced grief. The protocols, the expressions, the actions, it’s all something I can’t quite imagine, comprehend, wrap my head around in such a short period of time, in such a small space. I guess this is a cross cultural experience however, but so far, maybe, this has been one of the most difficult, or feelingly difficult, to wrap myself around, and knowledgeably embrace.

Tomorrow comes after another sleepless night listening to the voices around the campfire, which really makes me want to crack a beer and tell stories for hours, but of course I must reign in my “American-ness” in this regard. I must not sit with the drunken men. I must be a good conservative Rwandan woman. Exiting my house on “tomorrow’s” morning, I am met with rows of benches already filled with people waiting for the burial ceremony to start. Sneaking off to work for a few hours, I watch as people continue past my health center, dressed in their best, assembling on these benches. A quiet melancholy sound echoes down the hillside towards me for at least an hour before I return. Once the ceremony begins we are told to stand and directed to walk through the house where the family, his wife and eight daughters, dressed all in white, wait around the casket singing. We walk past them, some of the girls wearing dark sunglasses even though they are inside. The women’s voices catch as people pass the casket, pressing their hands against it for one last goodbye. A small piece of glass over his face is built into the casket, and I see his face turned to the side, much more like he was sleeping than the standard on the back, hands crossed in front posture we often utilize.

They carry the casket outside, stories are told, songs are sung, and every now and then, a few rain drops fall onto the quiet crowd. The crowds rise again following the casket to the side of the house, where the umusaza is buried, with a layer of cement poured above his body. A cross is placed at one end, a large picture of him leaning against it, with bouquets of flowers for a backdrop. Fanta and sorghum beer is served to the waiting crowd, a few more songs are sung, then the crowds disperse. After, Mama Diane asks me if this is my first funeral in Rwanda, as her grandson squeals in terror next to her at the sight of me. To this, she laughs and I smile, and I leave her to her family.