Amariliz, just some thoughts

For this one I am just going to talk. I do not have anything specific to say, not about Africa or the clinic. I have no tourist list or exciting events to recount. What I have is … I don’t actually know, perhaps we can define them as moments, brief spaces in time.

Tears of joy? One by one progressively dropping, keeping a steady pattern left to settle on cheeks for brief moments in time. Swiftly. Gently.  Smoothed away by soft, youthful finger tips, on rough wrinkled experienced skin.

True joy. The recognition of privilege. Knowledge. Your niece actually daughter is reaching her dream

Wait. Wrong word.

ESCAPED, she got away left the hopeless netting of countries boundaries. Freedom, not just to dream, that is too simple. Freedom to make dreams realities. The privilege she and many like her, trapped, will never have. The privilege to be related to this privilege.

Reality. To be turned away from a hospital because you are not sick enough. Basic human rights, a luxury of developed countries?

The privilege to dream. Privileged, she said privileged. I am privileged because of my mother’s dis-privileges, her devotion, and her courage.

Pulse increasing, hot flashes, dizziness, feeling of weakness, masked for necessity. A facade of strength.

Death, Pain, Love

Love for a perfect stranger

Love of a mother

Love of a community

Silent cries, outward gut wrenching sorrow. Blood, bleeding, life, death. Guilt, blame, uselessness.

Agony of a mother. The loss of a small beauty, light in the world, a child.

Death. More than a single moment, necessary, perhaps unavoidable. As love keeping a permanent place in your life and in the heart.