The Quiet

All has fallen silent in my parent’s farmhouse in Kansas. The babies are sleeping after a full day of entertaining grandparents, eating nutrient-rich foods, riding in tractors, playing with plastic and fuzzy toys, and splashing in bathtubs full of water clean enough to drink. One day looks so different from the next. There is no such thing as normalcy. Somehow this healthy routine feels just as foreign as days in Haiti looking for fresh water, hunting down cans of milk and formula, distributing supplies to communities and sleeping outside.

It has been one week since we stepped off the plane into the arms of stability. Friends and family greeted us as we walked in a sleep-deprived daze off the tarmac after our flight touched down in Denver. As their arms wrapped around us, tears fell and we gave in to their protection.

We wrapped ourselves in their warm clothes, fed ourselves with the food they shared, slept in their beds, bathed in their showers, warmed next to their fireplaces, played and visited in their living rooms. Our children were outfitted from head to toe in clothes, shoes, car seats and toys by the generosity of many.

In the last week we have reunited with a whirlwind of family and friends. There are too many people to thank, an overwhelming array of generosity spilled upon us, staggering displays of love and support. In the midst of it all, our little family tries to fabricate something of a routine. We’ve waded through sniffles and diarrhea while adjusting to a drastic change of temperature and the shocking availability of convenience.

We still live completely in the moment, unsure of a future as far ahead as a week and hesitant to look back at the past in our wake. It is easier to focus on the cries of our hungry child or catching up on the life of a long-missed friend than to let thoughts waver out of the here-and-now.

If we stay in the present, stay in “survival mode” we can better ignore our transient lifestyle, ignore the fact we continue to live out of a suitcase, sleeping our children in one house after another, introducing them to a new sea of faces everyday. We can ignore that we live completely on the generosity of countless friends and relatives who open their homes, their pantries, their closets to us, wrapping us in the security of their love. We can ignore the guilt that we’ve abandoned our friends and partners in their greatest hour of need, the anxt that comes from not being busy in the work we have done for the last year and a half, the restlessness of having to wait for official documents and a restructured plan to get back to the business at hand in Haiti. So we stay in the present.

Staying in the present, we don’t stop to contemplate how different this world looks from the one we just left. Manicured lawns, lights glowing from every window in 2-story houses, fresh and drinkable water gushing from every tap, neat rows of traffic pushing the speed limit over the highways and overpasses, neatly stacked fresh produce of every color and flavor piled in sparkling grocery stores bragging a dozen varieties of each choice of food or cleaning product, sterile skyscraper hospitals where the norm is running a dizzying array of exams to nail down the most precise diagnosis.

Patrick and I have both sworn we’ve felt aftershocks—in Denver. While riding with a friend to a pharmacy, my heart suddenly started racing and breath became short while passing a construction site and its pile of rock. Watching CNN brings anger at the slant being reported, frustration at the individuals picked to be showcased, and endless tears as we see the faces representing the people we love. Quickly channels are changed to something of no consequence.

We’ve skirted away from quiet. With quiet brings the realization of where we are and where we aren’t. With quiet comes the flashbacks to scenes of places changed forever, faces lost under the rubble and faces who survived and are left to rebuild their lives.

I find myself trying to remember each face, each mannerism, each talent of friends lost to the earthquake. The number of funerals to attend is too countless to conceive, so there will be none. So instead we go through the roll-call of students we will no longer teach, community members who will no longer lead, patients we will no longer treat, children who will no longer grow, mourning not only their lives but the impact that they were sure to make on their communities, mourning the talents that fall useless to the days ahead.

I mourn Madam Pastor who left 2 children and a high-energy husband behind. She helped augment my class lectures by her own experiences, brought children in for evaluation from her community in City Solei, asked advice on the medicines she had at her disposal for which to treat others.

I mourn Darlene who was the first medical student to take me by the hand and offer me friendship. With a smile she was the first to welcome me in a time when I felt completely out-of-place a year ago. While sure I was failing as an English-speaking teacher barely functioning with a teen-aged translator and a medical curriculum, she took me by the hand at the CONASPEH congress and insisted that I march with her and her classmates during our demonstration march through the streets of Port-au-Prince. It was that day that I found out for the first time that my students actually, beyond reason, liked me. Accepted me. And I’ll never forget that day. That hand-holding. That friend.

I mourn Beatrice and her smart sass from the back row, always having the right answers, always impatient for the rest of the class to catch up with comprehension. I remember our day driving into her neighborhood to treat a few people in her community she had concerns about. Outside of class, she was always begging me for a pill to make her fat, laughing when I called that magic pill “more food.”

I mourn Miss Altena and all the meetings we had planned, all the new ideas we’d shared and her endless kindness. On the day of the earthquake, hours before her death, she had walked into my clinic, given me a hug and welcomed me back from holiday break.

So many faces. I struggle to remember each one because there won’t be a service with flowers, eulogies, and elaborate burials. The loss is too large. The mass graves too full.

From this overstuffed couch in Kansas, I remember the faces of people who are still living, now with more challenges than ever. Miguelson was to start his first semester in medical school. Now he is a community organizer, trying to gather funds to feed his neighbors as they gather together forming security, shelter, and combining resources to survive. Who knows when he’ll be able to go to school, much less find work. Miss Joly was injured as she escaped the falling CONASPEH school. Now she alone is nurse to her displaced community without any supplies to aid her efforts. So many I worked with are now taking shelter with family in the country, awaiting the rebuilding of schools and clinics so they may return to work once again. As CNN and the world focuses on the immediate needs of food, water and medicine, I ache for the bigger needs of education, jobs and infrastructure that are ultimately needed to bring about true, healthy sustainability of life.

After a week in Denver, we now find ourselves in my parent’s farmhouse in Kansas, miles away from the nearest neighbor. Here the lights of the city are too far away to pollute the night sky. Quiet overtakes if we forget to speak. Here we will be forced to remember, to cry, to heal.

We’ll have to push aside the guilt of having the luxury of removing ourselves from the rubble and struggle to sit in the land of plenty and convenience, creating space for healing. We removed ourselves to take care of our family. We did so out of necessity. We do so in order to better serve in days ahead.

So we’ll face the quiet, drudge up the images, remember the faces, cry the tears, and question the heavens. We’ll humble ourselves to be the recipients of good-will and charity. We’ll heal ourselves and our family.

And then we’ll organize. Plan. Rebuild. Join forces. Get to work. Because the longer we are away, the harder our hearts pull us back.