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Not Finished
7/27/09
My last day at Sisters of Charity was like every other day. I sat on the floor, held some crying babies, held Martina and exercised her little arms and legs, then did the same for Heidi.
I fed Martina her bowl of slop. It took less than an hour. I congratulated myself on how quickly I got it done. I held her for a long time. I sang her a couple of Death Cab for Cutie and Straylight Run songs. She smiled up at me in that innocent way she does with her beautiful blind eyes gazing right past me.
When it was time to put them to bed, I laid Martina in her crib, then picked her back up and hugged her. I hate to say this, but it was totally unsatisfying. It was like hugging a lamppost. She’s so skinny. I felt this strong sense that it was entirely incomplete. It was not the way hugs ought to be.
I set her down again then stood looking at her. She stopped smiling and just laid there. I guess she thought she was alone now. I started talking to her and she smiled again. She has a beautiful smile.
Drool dripped down her cheek as I explained to her that I probably wouldn’t see her again until I was dead. I told her she’d have muscles on those skinny little bones by then and we’d dance together with Jesus. I told her it’s all going to be all right one day and she’d see with those eyes and know the world is a beautiful place and her parents wouldn’t sort garbage for a living and they’d be there to hug her every day just like everyone else and we’d all be brothers and sisters who love each other.
I was trying to explain to her what the kingdom of God looks like. I have no reason to believe she understood a single word, but she seemed pleased by it all. I said goodbye to the other kids, came back to Martina’s crib, wiped the drool off of her face and started to cry.
I told myself I had to leave. I walked to the now-empty room where I’d held and fed her every day for weeks. I wiped away my own tears and walked away. I wondered if she was still smiling.
I met the team in another room. We walked down the stairs together and my friend Moheb said to me, “It’s finished.” I was really angry at that. It’s not finished. That hug wasn’t the way hugs are supposed to be.
I wrote in my journal that night, “It’s not finished” with a few extra expletives I won’t share with you here. I wrote it a few times, and then I wrote the line from U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday: “We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.” I thought of her laying there every day, getting touched only when someone feeds her and gives up halfway through.
This isn’t just what leaving Sisters of Charity felt like. This is what leaving Mokattam felt like.
There is so much more to be done. Jesus kept telling us that the kingdom of God is at hand. In that kingdom “God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Then Jesus announces, “See, I am making all things new.”
It doesn’t look to me like anything was made new. It looks like it’s the same old way the world has always been.
I guess that’s what Christianity is or maybe just what faith is: this hope that there’s a better way, that everything will change, that everything is going to be the way it was supposed to be.
Lord, come quickly.
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