Annama sees through my face. There’s a hoard unlocking out of her. I see Us in her, I see our accumulated communal…
local/global grief, I see forbidden joy in her sparkling eyes, and then the tears fall.
She cannot forgive herself, nor the family that’ve abused her over the years. So she walked away from the few who loved her, lost her house, job, pension, wrote away what was hers. Says it was a mind game they played. The details blur as I write this.
Annama lives close by, but we hardly meet. Her door is locked twice, in double doors, with peephole. Her face is dark over the cheekbones and forehead, as if from staring in soot. The rest of her skin is like wheat silk. The hands are quiet, folding short clean nails. For 50, she is like 30. Brisk silver lined hair, the tan kameez kurti spotless. Today she wears gold hoops in her ears. Her eyes don’t blink.
“I cannot forgive him, when he died I was relieved, like a bird out of prison cage. But then after the funeral I remember the love. How I loved him. Even his voice, so rich. But he took my entire life, the debts were too much. I gave in to everything he asked. Him and his family. They took all.I can’t forgive….don’t want to. Till my salary was there, he was alright. Then the abuse started. Unspeakable. Cannot tell..”
Last week she brought us gourd chutney, seasoned with curry leaf in roasted crushed peanuts, mint leaf and red dried chillies. Never tasted anything like it. How can someone so beautiful be hurt this bad, and still stay beautiful: if only she could see herself…
She grins, thru’ tears. We want to say a prayer. Its the only thing I know to do. Hey I know what rejection is. And judgment. If you dress up the slightest bit, you’re ungodly. Then there’s the Ungodly themselves who’ll judge you for “trying to be too holy.”
You want to say, “Ufff.” But what’d Jesus do. (Ofcourse we’re not Jesu. But we’re recipients of too much Grace to be silent now).
Annama folds her clean wheat silk hands in prayer. Later she says she’s thinking about This Jesu. How He died on the Cross, and said, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing…”
All our accumulated grief pinned on that Terrific Cross. Do you ever get over that sight? Do you ever understand the depth of such Love that persists thru our indefinite mess? Do we have any ability to forgive anyone, or ourselves, except through Faith that sees the bigger picture? I personally have vineyards of hurt just erased by those Hands. The Hands of God, nail-pierced by human grief
I’ve watched broken lives mend before my eyes, watched a paralytic whisper gratitude; been friends with one in wheelchair whooping through his house with unstoppable Joy…you don’t fake that. It is another oxygen. I pray that Annama and the rest of us can leave our hoard of accumulated failure, at the Altar of Grace where New beginnings happen;
I pray to the One who loved me first and gave His Only Son to die for me/ us. Its my absolute obsession. Not pointless. Try it. It gives off a Peace you don’t fake, just take.
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