When I first met Gogo, I was a blubbering mess. Sitting together with this affable, smiling old lady whom I had met only five minutes ago, I haltingly blurted out my story and promptly burst into tears before I could even finish. In her infinite wisdom, she didn’t say a word, she let me cry it out and she listened. I later learnt that she herself, had been the victim of a paralysing set of circumstances. The ones you read about in the newspaper, where an entire family dies at the same time, a line of coffins spread across a lounge that was once the witness to happy memories.
It is a fickle thing, death. When you hear about the death of someone you don’t know, you aren’t likely to be moved, you know not the pain that acutely holds an individual. I often ask myself how God chooses the ones who die, how they die and at which point they do. There are families in this world who know very little of death, their fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, grandparents and great grandparents are still alive. They have never even been near a coffin. At first, when my pain was still fresh, I was the epitome of bitterness. How dare God take away so much from me and very little from others. The statistical chance of pain and death taking up a comfortable chair in my household even when I wanted to shove it out, was so low one would wonder what heinous act I had committed to deserve it.
I always give the example of 2 acquaintances of mine, unbeknownst to each other, whose lives I look upon and ponder. Mr Ndoro, who fasts more days than he actually eats, he will fast until his clothes hang upon his frail body, his face gaunt, he will respond to your cheery hello with statements filled with glory and honour to the God most high. You know one of those people who respond with, “blessed and highly favoured and how are you?” Mr Ndoro is one of those. He will fervently pray, so much so that if you happen upon him, you can feel the earnestness of his prayers. He is an early riser, at work by 7am, mindful of his family and home by 6pm. I see no major transgressions he could possibly be committing, but his business fails, dismally. Sure, he has intermittent bursts of profitable periods but he works himself to the point of exhaustion, which I imagine with no food in his belly, is quite close. Try as he might, ill fortunes seem to be his fate, it is however certainly not from lack of trying.
Enter Mr Paradzi, whose wealth is so immense he once moved out of his household simply because his wife did not like it anymore, so they built a new one in a different location and replaced all of the furniture. THAT’S how rich Mr Paradzi is. He wins plenty of accolades, drives huge cars for sport, interchanging them based on what he wants to wear on that day and what his wife’s latest fancy is. One would be tempted to argue that perhaps he DOES pray, on his own, a whispered prayer uttered every so often, but on the face of it and for all intents and purposes? He has no religious abode, he is well known for several extra marital affairs, and let me put it this way, on a girls night? I met and LEFT him in Newscafe, and that was at 3am. But oh how he flourishes!
The sheer stark differences in their lives makes me question a lot of things, the experiences of my own life make it no better. How does God work? How does he choose who excels and who does not? Why does one person die at 29 and the other at 95? Because surely these men are proof that hard work, prayer and fasting are not always the key to success and hardly anyone would choose to die early.
I have heard many theories, once when my mother was absolutely terrified I would turn into an atheist, she decided it was a good idea to get a pastor to counsel me. I posed my questions, many as they are, the ones that plagued my mind at night and made me angry. Another theory postulated that our riches are not of this world, but who are we kidding? I hardly think Mr Ndoro was praying so that he could only be rich in the afterlife. And why can’t we have both anyway? Since we are princes and princesses of the most high God? If we say no bad thing comes from God, then why is he allowing bad things to happen, of the bad things, why are others spared, or better off? What is the criteria? Why does Anna get to live in Borrowdale in all of its opulence and splendour and yet Itai is born and dies in the squalor of poverty in chipiti piti jecha?
Of the questions? I got very few answers, “the ways of the Lord are vastly mysterious, “the pastor said, “more than we can ever begin to comprehend.” I feared she would feel insulted and bring up my profession and its troublesome reputation if I had continued with my trajectory. So I smiled, nodded and thanked her. I DID get a verse out of it, one that spoke to my spirit, bruised and weary and ready to give up. Proverbs 17 verse 22, “A merry heart is a good medicine; But a broken spirit drieth the bones” or my favorite version, “A cheerful heart brings good healing, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
Suffice to say, my constantly questioning nature has resulted in my having a complicated relationship with religion. I have told myself, if at least this verse understands what I am going through then perhaps that’s a starting point, as good as any, to soothe my contused inner substance. If at least my conversations with God has THAT starting point, then that is enough. You see, the pain is hard to explain, it can only be understood if you have felt it, and even then, the circumstances are different. It is like a rough and weathered rope, knotted tightly around your heart, its outer callouses inflicting further agony, as if its constricting nature is not bad enough. It is embedded in you, inextricably woven, each strand connected to your heart, each waking minute commanding you to be reminded of its existence. And that, is how, a crushed spirit dries up the bones, its internalized and adopted until even your physical being is absorbed by the pain.
I think we have all felt it, at some point, a crushing sense of unfairness and awareness, perhaps you constantly do, I wish I had the antidote to this never-ending poison that circulates, making the rounds as if it is paid to do so. Gogo passed away today, and so for now, I remember her as she smiled and listened through all the times my tears threatened to betray me. I pray and hope that the intricacies of the mind that plague us, are solved in a way that heals us, for without that, we are but dried up bones.
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