heavy

  

Everything feels so heavy 

    As I am in the kitchen, carefully extricating jello from its container, I listen to the heart-wrenching tale of this Honduran woman. And as I serve the jello into the bowls, I almost start to cry, as she tells me about her country, its beauty and how deeply she wishes she could return. But she can’t, or they would kill her just like they killed her family. Who are they? Does it matter? What horrors has this woman witnessed? What has she left behind? A little girl clings to her legs and asks me if I like her pretty pink dress that she just got from our roperia. As she twirls, I smile and am reminded of innocence, trust, love, the pastel pink such a sharp contrast to the atrocities I just listened to. 

    My friend and I head upstairs to start our English lesson for these refugees who are soon headed north, headed towards hostilities of a different sort, headed to a place where they don’t speak the language and won’t feel welcome, but will at least be safe. We start with the basics. “My name is Riley.” A name that is actually quite difficult for people to say. “I am from the United States.” We go in a circle, and half a dozen people, with kids squirming on their laps, painstakingly recite these phrases back to us, exerting a grand effort to form these strange sounds with their mouths. Our rough lesson plans feel irrelevant and honestly irreverent now. These dear souls are going to be thrown to the wolves in the States. We throw our vision out the window and ask them what they would like to know. “Dirreciones!” “donde esta la parada del bus?” “y el taxi?” Of course, how silly of us. We break down left, right, straight, blocks, where, and realize that there is really no equivalent for “th” in Spanish. As our time runs out, they frantically ask when we will be back, and I can see the anxiety in their eyes as they fear the unknown of what is to come and know that they cannot return home. 

    I saw Alicia today again; her and her daughters and grandkids have been in the shelter for a few weeks now, awaiting their interview for resettlement in the US. They fled El Salvador two years ago, and were in a different safe house in central America for basically that whole time, but they were found by them. The same thoughts haunt me. Who are they? Does it matter? What horrors has this woman witnessed? What has she left behind? 

    There is so much pain in the souls of these beautiful humans that are staring at me as I teach them the days of the week. They have lived so much and fought so hard to be where they are. They have crossed rivers and jungles and risked their lives just to save themselves and their family. Yet they smile as they finally say where they are from and deliver directions to the bus stop in English. One of them, just sixteen, eagerly showed me her notes in English, and I could see the hope and spark in her eyes. She is everything that is the world. Battered down by the brutality of humanity, she still persists, full of life and dreams and excitement. What will become of her when she crosses the border? I hope life will be kind for the poor dear has already faced enough sorrow. 

 

And in the midst of all of this, my Nanna is dying–drugged up and in pain, meeting an end that is eerily similar to that of my mom, just months ago. It’s a different kind of heavy, but it feels less pressing somehow. I just don’t know how to wrap my head around the different types of suffering and how they shouldn’t be compared nor dismissed. How I can and should be sad about the cruelty of cancer and the harsh reality of my grandma’s pain but also mourn the inhumanity of displacement and how harrowing it is to be a refugee.

 

May I sit in this grief and maybe, just maybe, not try to explain it all away.