An Easter Monday tale

Mar 27, 2016 News

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By Dennis Nichols
Why do people share stories of personal tragedy? Why are wounds reopened and traumas relived? Why

does the story of the death and resurrection of a Jewish Rabbi more than 2,000 years ago still elicit such strong emotional and spiritual response today?
One reason is that the death of any individual is never about that individual only. On almost every level of human interaction, it is a shared experience. And at Easter time as Christians commemorate the last days of Jesus on Earth, a family I know well relives such an experience – a part of which I share with readers today.
Tomorrow, I plan on going to the seawall or the Botanical Gardens with two of my sons, four of my grandchildren, and a few other relatives. Kite-flying and gastronomical delights should feature prominently; maybe music also. But the transient happiness of the day will be shadowed by the memory of another Easter Monday, 21 years ago, at Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast where I was then teaching. A partly third person narrative will help cushion the numbing reality of the story.
There once was a young man who loved kites, among other child-like things, even though he was well into his teenage years. There was wonder in his eyes as he watched younger children running with their kites, soaring, dipping, and whirling against cloud-puffed skies on the Georgetown seawall or in a rural pasture somewhere. He would point and laugh, maybe remembering his own first kite when he was four or five years old. But he never spoke.
You see he had been born with a disability. He was deaf, due to birth complications faced by his mother as she was being prepared for delivery on May 1st, 1977, still known as ‘Labour’ Day. Ironic! It was later discovered that during a difficult forceps procedure, he suffered damage to that area of the brain which controls hearing. Nevertheless he was a handsome child, and as he grew, many imagined that a young Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali must have had the same kind of looks and physique as he did.
Yes, he had a disability, but he also had an overriding ability, which was to love purely, and as unconditionally as anyone I had ever met. He was trusting and compassionate and also intelligent enough to be slightly manipulative, but in the most charming way you could imagine. Wherever he went people took to him instantly. He was physically big for his age, and by the time he was twelve he towered over his younger brothers.
He quickly learned to use hand signals, foot thumps, and touch, to communicate with those around him, in addition to the specialized sign language he was learning at school. He loved to play with his siblings as well as his parents, but he also took pleasure in responsibly doing household chores like sweeping, tidying, and washing the ‘wares’. He liked to eat, and had a special fondness for sugar – an indiscretion that caused him to be scolded repeatedly. As a result of his eating his waistline increased.
By the time he was fifteen, he had also developed a condition that caused one of his feet to swell occasionally; eventually this condition became permanent. By the age of 16 when he went to live with his family at Anna Regina, he was fully aware of how different he was from most of the young men about the place, and would question with unmistakable hand signs, why he couldn’t speak, why his leg was swollen, and even why he didn’t have a girlfriend. His face lit up at pictures of beautiful girls as he outlined with expressive hands, the contours of the more shapely ones.
On that Easter Monday in 1995, he made the frame of a kite he would fly later. He took great care to rest it against a wall and signaled his brothers not to meddle with it. Then he went and helped his mother with the cleaning and cooking, and when the food was ready, took pride in helping dish it out by neatly ‘bowling’ off each family member’s portion of rice that was to be accompanied by steaming cups of dhal. It was his last meal.
To this day no one knows for sure what happened shortly after night fell that evening. A blackout blanketed Anna Regina and the moon which had been full two nights earlier hadn’t risen as yet. The house was in almost total darkness when he quietly slipped down the stairs, bucket in hand, to fetch water from the swollen canal at the edge of the government compound. No one knew for certain why he did that night what he’d never done before. No one missed him for the 15 minutes since he had last been observed taking a bath.
Did he slip on the muddy bank of the trench? Was he pushed by someone bent on evil mischief, or did he go into the canal voluntarily? Was he ‘sacrificed’ to appease some deity as a few residents suggested? There was no answer, only the sight of my teenage son sprawled naked on a mud dam, dying, even as I tried desperately to resuscitate him, but already sensing in my heart that he was gone. His 18th birthday was just two weeks away. The ‘family I know well’ as you’ve probably guessed, is my own.
Aided by onlookers and the glow from flashlight and flambeau, I placed him in a vehicle and headed for the Suddie Hospital, all the way still trying to breathe life back into his body, already growing cold. The equally cold pronouncement of ‘DOA’ by a doctor was a formality. Back home my wife and children prayed and waited.
By the time I returned the curious crowd had gone, the waning moon had risen, and the murky canal heaved gently. In the house, I punched the wall against which his kite frame leant, hugged my wife and cried with her. Our firstborn was gone, released (far too soon) from his earthly body.
I am not superstitious or fundamentally religious, but there seemed to be elements of fate in the life and death of my son. Both his birth and death were traumatic, both were on holidays (holy days) and on that Easter Monday morning in 1995, my wife during her morning devotion had blurted out ‘May God have mercy on his soul’ something usually reserved for the recently deceased. In hindsight it seemed more a premonition than a slip of the tongue. It also brought some degree of comfort and closure for us.
At Easter-time, Christians worldwide symbolically re-enact the death and resurrection of the ‘Son of God’. For them, two thousand years hasn’t diminished its significance. For me and my family, it’s been 21 years only. Tomorrow, when I see the kites climbing, buzzing, and dive-bombing over Georgetown, I will remember the story of Jesus’ resurrection, and of my own son’s brief, compelling life.
There are a hundred other memories I could have recalled about the life and death of Kwesi, but some are too intimate and too painful to share now. Many persons, on the Essequibo Coast and elsewhere, helped to console my family, and assist us in more tangible ways. Having our grief shared and absorbed by others helped a lot.
Hopefully, sharing this story may help others do the same. Happy Easter Monday!

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