11/24/06

I received an email titled, "Sad News" from my brother-in-law Mwelwa. Any time these come in, I hope it's going to be a distant relative, and not someone close. Today that hope was dashed. The message read simply:

"Hi, I just wanted to let you know that Baron (Bashi Anna), Chilufya's husband passed on this afternoon at UTH where he was admitted on Monday."

I was in the midst of studying at home, pharmacology of antihelmithic drugs whose utility are very clear in Zambia. I had been organizing the information according to my links to Africa: for schistosomiasis anywhere, you would like to use Praziquantel. And there's an Acetylcholinesterase inhibitor that would work in Zambia, but wouldn't necessarily work in Brazil or Asia. 

Then Baron died.

Hours later, Maggie called, crying, and since she had been a little ill, I instantly worried that she was feeling worse, but no, it wasn't her health...Annie's dad had died. She got a one minute phone call from Aggie, just long enough to say that he had passed. I stood in the doorway to our home, and leaned my head on the wall, and listened to my wife of five years crying on the phone.

"I'm so sorry," I said. My left eye got wet, and I sighed, and I listened to Maggie let go her sorrow, yet again...

Later Maggie got home with Estelle, after picking her up from school near her work. I met them in the garage, opened each of their doors, and held onto Maggie a while, in the garage, with the door to her car still open, and felt the tremor of sadness in her. I just felt lethargy, and weakness, and helplessness, and a bit of anger, and frustration, and impotence.

Maggie called home, and they spoke a while. Estelle got on the phone and talked to Annie. Annie is one of my favorite Mumbis. She's Estelle's age mate, and cousin, being the daughter to Maggie's sister. I was just in Zambia, and spent some time with Mary, Annie's mom, and Baron, and Annie. So did my friend Jeff Davis, who was visiting Lusaka for a month this Summer. Baron was fit and fine, working, and with no obvious worries.

Here in Birmingham, today, I sat, and Maggie sat, still in her FedEx uniform, and she kept crying as Estelle commiserated with Annie by telephone.

"He was fine, wasn't he?" Maggie asked.

I nodded. "I was just with him," I replied, and then I asked what happened.

"He was fine, and then he was admitted on Monday. The medicines stopped working, and he didn't have any blood," Maggie said. "And they couldn't give him any blood at UTH," she continued, her face contorting in the emotional pain of deep sadness.

"Why not?" I asked. 

Maggie's face crinkled more, and she somehow let out the words of frustration and pain and unnecessariness of it all..."They were on strike." He didn't have to die, is what her words didn't say. And that is exactly, utterly despairingly, deadly true.

I went upstairs later, to check on Maggie, and she was crying herself to sleep. I sat with her a little while, silent, holding her hand, stroking her back, and wishing the world were a different place in some ways.

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