Those of us that have lost a child know how devastating it is, how emotionally paralyzing. Some of the parents in the various online support groups I belong to have lost more than one child. I cannot begin to imagine the depth of their pain.
Yesterday I was reading random news reports online and came upon an article about the famine in Somalia. Reports about the famine is nothing new. News stories had been in the newspapers and on television for a while; and then the stories slowed down and now have almost entirely stopped. This headline stopped me in my tracks: "750,000 Somalis are at risk of starving within the next few months". The article appears in the THE GLOBE AND MAIL, dated Monday, September 5, 2011, and is written by Geoffrey York. The article begins like this:
"As the last bit of life drained from his frail body, Ahmed Nur was still tethered to an intravenous tube. His father brushed his fingers over the boy's eyes to close the motionless eyelids. He gently pulled a sheet over his son's face and removed the tube from his thin arm.
'Don't cry, don't cry' the neighbors said to his mother, Khadijo Mumin. 'God gave him to you, and God is taking him back.'
But she wailed with grief, even as they hugged her. 'I'm losing all my children now,' she said through her tears.
Of her five children, two have perished since Sunday, and two more are lying sick and weak in the same Mogadishu hospital room where eight-year old Ahmed slowly faded away on Monday."
As I read about the Mumin family, tears streamed down my face. There are no words that can describe the degree of agony these parents must be feeling, the helplessness, the despair.
The rest of the article is paraphrased as follows:
Ms. Mumin and her dying family, who have trekked from camp to camp in search of food for the past year, are an omen of a much greater disaster that threatens to come. The United Nations announced on Monday that four million Somalis - more than half of the country's population - are now living in famine zones, and 750,000 are at risk of death within the next few months.
Tens of thousands have already died in the famine this year, killed by a lethal combination of protracted drought and a ban on food aid from international relief agencies by Islamist extremists who control most of southern Somalia. Hundreds of people are dying every day in southern Somalia because of the famine, and at least half of the victims are children, the UN said. Across much of East Africa, including Kenya and Ethiopia, more than 12 million people are in desperate need of food aid.
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This is not a story about a single family that is suffering an unbearable, mind-bending loss. This is a story about an entire country in mourning. A story about the impending death of many, many more children and adults. A story about desperation and cruelty.
There is nothing that I can do to change what is happening and what is going to happen but I can acknowledge that I am aware of the situation. And through this acknowledgment show respect and understanding to the people of Somalia and the other African countries affected by the famine.
They are not just a people in a distant land. They are our earthly brothers and sisters that we are spiritually bound to. We do not need to know them individually to care about them. Just as each of us in our online grief support groups may never have met in person, we still love each other and support each other in our shared experience of grief and pain and suffering. We have felt the very same pain felt by Khadijo Mumin and her husband. We know their feelings of helplessness and desperation and depression. We know what it is like to be emotionally bankrupt. And some of you have watched as your own child faded away and died - just as Mr. and Mrs. Mumin did. To the people of Somalia: we understand and we hurt with you and for you,
Let's take a moment and, if you are so inclined, offer a prayer to our Heavenly Father on behalf of the people of Somalia and the other people in Africa suffering under the affects of this terrible famine. I thank you for your compassion.
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ST. MARK 12: 29-31 And Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, an with all thy strength; this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
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