Fr. John Fagan, s.x.

On the Sting of Death

From Mission: The Xaverian Way - Magazine from Great Britain

Death is something we all have to face in its many guises. John, here, shares with us what he calls his worst weekend. It is a moving and sad reflection on the difficulties he has had to face while living his mission in Bangladesh.

 

Before leaving to return to Bangladesh I had a few gatherings with friends and relatives. At one of them I remarked that one of the reasons for having this get-together was that I would be away for several years and given the age of some of my relatives and friends it was likely that some would be dead by the time I came home again. I was matter-of-fact about it but serious. It caused a bit of a stir among the elderly participants. Some even thought: what kind of a thing is that to say? While looking around to see who was most likely to be the first to go. We talked and laughed about it afterwards. 

 

Well, since then (March 2001) my words sadly have come true on more than one occasion and I have lost, as we say, some friends and relatives and I will not see them again when I come home. I will miss them. We all have the experience of realizing after people have died how really close they had been to us at different times in our lives and how we had benefited from their friendship, their concern and their love. It does us no harm at all to remember and to say thank you. And I do. However, the main reason I have wanted to write to you something about death really concerns a series of events that happened earlier this year here in Bangladesh and about which I find it difficult to write even now. The events took place over the week-end of Friday Is, of March to Sunday 3rd of March, one of the worst week-ends of my life. 

In the end I know all we can do is make our act of faith. I also know that part of my anger with God was that I felt that he had let me down, that in some way God had embarrassed me by not letting me save these children who were so powerless, so much in need. 

 

On the Friday the 1st I went with Khuturai, the secretary of the parish of Bandarban in the Chittagong Hill Tracts where I am still working, to visit his home village. We left at about 9 a.m on a baby-taxi and after half an hour's ride left it to wait for us while we went on a climb up the hills to the village. Khuturai is a Tripura village and the Tripura people build their houses in the hills.

 

After 40 minutes or so we reached the village. After a cup of tea we went on a tour of the 26 houses that make up the village. It was a pleasant tour. The people were friendly if wary of the stranger, the village was clean and tidy and the houses in good condition. At one of the houses Khuturai went inside the hut and returned with a grimace. There was a sick baby, he said, very sick. They wanted a blessing. I went in. It was a wee boy about one and a half years old. He was in his mother's arms, the father by their side. They had called him Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton Tripura (the Tripura people all take the surname of their tribe). He was in a very bad condition. He was very weak and barely conscious. He had been ill for over a month and they had not seen a doctor. They had used local healer and another was coming because, they said, the baby had been attacked by an evil spirit, a sbeesbee.

 

This is a common belief. If they stayed there the baby would certainly die, I said, but if they came with us to the hospital in Bandarban there was a chance he might live. They came with us struggling to go fast down the hill but aware that the baby's breathing was worsening. We stopped for a rest. He was hardly breathing and then passed a very long worm. We went on, reached the waiting baby-taxi and drove to the hospital as fast as we could. 

 

The doctor admitted him with relative calm. I was reassured by this and went home to the mission. A couple of hours later I was told that little Bill Clinton Tripura had died in the hospital. Later that afternoon I went back to the hospital to see the doctor. He had been so calm and had not reacted with any sense of emergency at the time of admission. I wanted to know why. If he had, maybe he could have saved the baby, I thought, and I told him so. He said he thought that I was a medical professional and knew the situation.

 

The baby had very serious pneumonia and had no chance of surviving, he said, even if the hospital had all the necessary medicine and facilities which they do not. I did not sleep well that night thinking of little Bill Clinton's death and its circumstances. The following day, Saturday the 2nd of March, I was told that Dhono, the father of the two cerebral palsy children we had been helping, wanted to see me. I came down quite happily to see him. We had taken Dhono and his wife with the children to a specialized hospital in the capital, Dhaka, where they had been given physiotherapy training and medical advice. The children had looked much better on their return just twenty days ago. As I came towards Dhono looking at him I knew immediately something was wrong. He started to speak but broke down. Ajarung, his elder daughter and the most severely handicapped, had died the previous night at 10 o'clock. She had the lapsed into unconsciousness after asking for some food and died peacefully. I was dumbstruck. After Dhaka we had hoped for improvement, not this. 

 

Dhono and his wife had managed with all their difficulties to care for and keep Ajarung alive for 9 years in their hill village. Why now, when it seemed that there might be some chance to improve her quality of life? Later I consulted the doctors. They were not surprised. Choking on food is not unusual in these cases.

 

On Sunday the 3rd I went to Sinai Para, Ajarung's village, to bury her. She was laid out on the bed in her house. I had difficulty believing it was the same Ajarung. I had only ever seen her agitated and in spasms due to her illness. Her face and mouth and tongue were always twisted this way and that as she struggled to cope with the spasms. 

 

But now I was looking at a lovely 10 year old girl, her face so peaceful and pretty, the Ajarung that only her parents really knew. Dhono and his wife are still struggling with Ajarung's death as they continue to do the best they know how for their other handicapped little girl, Abhini, and her little brother, A joy, who's as right as rain and bright as a button. 

 

At mass earlier that Sunday morning I had shared my anger and my disapproval of God's handling of these two children. 

 

But, in the end I know all we can do is make our act of faith. I also know that part of my anger with God was that I felt that he had let me down, that in some way God had embarrassed me by not letting me save these children who were so powerless, so much in need. I was also afraid that instead of being a good angel to the sick I was instead some sort of grim reaper and that I would do better to keep my incompetence to myself and away from the sick, especially sick children. This thought and feeling embedded themselves in me and, although I knew them to be illogical, lasted for months. They have receded now and I have moved on, but the memory of that week-end in March, 2002 will be with me for ever. I hope not to have others like it.

 

The title of this reflection on death is taken from First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, (1Cor. 1:55) which says: 0 death, where is your victory? 0 death, where is your sting? My faith in the resurrection does not leave space for the victory of death, but, as we all know, it can leave a bit of a sting, sometimes a very sore sting.

 

Fr. John Fagan (from "Mission: The Xaverian Way" - Magazine from Great Britain) » More