The Weight of Grief

Grief is a part of life. It happens to us all at some point: the loss of an aged loved one, the freak accident that claims the life of a friend. Yet the more I see of the world, the more convinced I am that certain places seem to experience more grief than others.

Tonight, within the span of 3 hours I heard the stories of 3 young men caught up in the midst of grief—all of them feeling hopeless, and yet unwilling to really admit how badly they were hurting. As I’ve often heard myself say to friends here, however, “you can fake-it with your words, but not with your eyes.”

I went with N to a distant relative’s funeral, but the struggle for him had nothing to do with the deceased.

N is a 20-something who fled his village under the cover of darkness several months ago because he felt that he just couldn’t live at home anymore. Apparently his 70-something parents were fighting a lot and he didn’t know how to handle the tension in the house. The more we talked, though, the more I realized how complicated the situation really was. Apparently both his older and younger siblings are married, so the care of these elderly parents falls to him as the only remaining single. However, both parents are trying to play him against the other, and there is an affair and domestic violence involved as well. On top of this intense personal war within, there’s also an incredible amount of shame that he feels now that the whole community knows what is going on—and the fact that he ran away means he has shamed himself on top of everything else.
The death of the relative has brought both his parents to town, and they found out “through the grapevine” that he was here. I was accompanying him to the funeral because it was the first time he had had any communication with his parents since he ran away. And now…to top it all off, they are talking about getting a divorce (yes…at 70!) and he feels he must go back to try to fulfill his obligation to his family.

While trying to support and encourage N as best I could, I met A, the son of the deceased man. He is a 17 yr-old high-school senior who just lost his father to TB. A, is now the only male, and the only source of income, for his mother and 4 sisters. He is working hard to “be the man,” but at 17 trying to graduate high-school, grieve the loss of his father, and provide for their family of 6, there is clearly more than he can possibly handle.

So after sharing, grieving, and sitting with these guys for a couple of hours, I took N back to his boarding house, only to run into I—the 23 yr old night guard. After chatting with him for a few minutes, he became uncharacteristically open, and I discovered that even at 23, he is a widower. Apparently he married at 19 or 20 and his wife became pregnant with their first child. The pregnancy went well and she carried the baby to term. During delivery, however, she became “inexplicably ill” and both she and the baby passed away—leaving him alone and a widower at 21. So now, he has what is considered a “good job” (read “stable income”), but it is one that leaves him alone in the quiet stillness of the night with nothing but his thoughts and a TV to occupy his mind.

That was 3 hours of one day of my life in this place. Their grief is real—not just real, but palpable. It’s not that there aren’t people back home that go through similar things. I even know some of those people. It’s just that here these stories, while all unique, are far too common. Their needs are great and in so many different areas. Yet even when the answer is clear, it is never easy for them to accept because the issues are so complex. So hold your friends and loved ones a little closer the next time you see them…and remember these who have lost theirs and could use a little holding too.