Saturday, 2 August 2014

One person grabbed each limb and struggled to hold her kicking legs still long enough to remove her high heels before she impaled herself or someone else.  A man--maybe her husband, or perhaps a brother--held her firmly around the waist and did his best to control her thrashing and lower her to the bench before she collapsed.  Her back arched as she twisted and writhed in pain, her plaintive wails piercing the calm morning air.  Abruptly, three pews up, another woman threw herself to the ground and began convulsing in agony, her black skirt soon covered in dust from the floor.  Her shrieks echoed those of the first woman and seemed, in some dark way, to compete to measure her misery.  When the mass ended and the pallbearers approached to removed the coffins, chaos erupted.  Dozens of cries filled the air and the crowd pressed forward around the caskets, as if preventing them from being removed might somehow reverse the death that was being mourned.  I could barely hear Father Rick continuing to sing throughout the anguished lamentations and I marveled at his stoicism.  It was my first time experiencing a type of mourning typical to the Haitian culture; calling it difficult to witness does not do it justice.  I noticed two visiting Italian girls crying quietly in a corner and many other volunteers' eyes were red, although we didn't even know the people who had died.  However, as excruciating as it was to observe such heart-wrenching displays of raw grief, it suddenly occurred to me that in some sad way, this funeral seemed better than many of our daily masses where no families are present at all.