Last week during the lunchtime Mass, someone prayed for her sister to give birth naturally even though the doctors' reports showed that she was to only give birth via C-section.
I don't remember the other Mass intentions that were read but that one stayed with me because I've been in that position before.
First of all, my beloved grandmother died in 2008 while I was in high school and since then…or on top of my constant anxiety that I could become a total orphan any minute, I started counting the "parents" on my fingers. I had 3. My grandma, my mother and my guardian who was named on my father's deathbed.
When my parents asked, he did not hesitate. He is a priest, and at the time, he was the Chaplain of Lubaga Hospital.
This decision was made with me in utero, and so by the time I came out, I found no dad and this priest was the first father figure. I don't know why I chose to call him ‘Jjaajja’ though. It could have been because of his already greyed hair.
My grandmother was the other parent because she is the other person I saw actively involved in our lives. She even sent us food from the village and was present on my middle brother's visiting days at school.
I don't know what prompted the conversation, but when I was 11, after we had stopped playing Ludo with Mom because night had fallen and we could no longer see the board, I told Mom that I didn't want Grandma to die before me. I think she said something along the lines of it being impossible.
By then I was already so clung to my mother because she was the only parent I came directly from, and it scared me so much to imagine life without her. I think I was okay before I saw her being knocked down by a taxi when I was 6 or 7. Every night she didn't return home by 8, she would find me mourning, very sure that "this time, the taxi has finished her". I struggled with this until I was about 14.
I had just grown secure. I knew that my parents would be around with me, but my grandmother bowed out, and I went down another spiral. Out of the 3, I was only left with 2, and I cried often while at school. If I called any of them with a teacher's number and they didn't pick, I would go somewhere private, behind toilets, in bathrooms or anywhere someone wasn't, to mourn because to me, them not picking my calls meant that they died and no one told me.
This stayed on for about 6 years. I had joined university then, and I had learnt that sometimes people are away from their phones. That it is normal to miss calls, but I would not rest until I heard their voices. I think what made me firmer for Grandfather was a time I spent a full week calling his phone and it wasn't going through, and when it finally came back on, he said, while laughing, that he didn't realise his battery had died. I asked him to give me another workmate-priest's phone number. I called that man until he would just take his phone to him without ever saying hello. I'd hear in the background "Here, your granddaughter is looking for you.” He knew that he was just a bridge between parent and child on the days this parent forgot his phone.
It was during my university days when fundraiser car washes began - I think. I went for Carol's. She had cancer. We washed cars and finally the money was gotten. She went to India for surgery but Carol died shortly after.
I think in that period, there were a couple of stories of people that travelled for surgeries, but they never returned alive. I never realised that India, to me, had become synonymous with death until I called my grandfather one day, and he said he was working on his travel documents because a doctor said he should go to India for surgery.
When the call ended, I cried like he had already died. I prayed every day, and many times while on campus grounds, moving between classes, I would burst into tears, desperately begging God. Very often, I excused myself from my peers to go and relieve myself from the pressure pushing against my chest. I'd cry. Take deep breaths and return to them like nothing happened. I told God that I knew my prayer didn't make sense because travel documents were already being worked on, but I asked him to cancel those plans if my grandfather was going to be returned dead. I knew he had the power to do that. I begged God, telling him that I was not yet ready for another death. My grandmother's death, even after 10 years, still destroyed me many times a year. I knew he knew, but I explained to him.
One night, I picked up the phone to check on him. I asked him when he would be travelling so that I could at least walk with him to the airport. And he said, “Ohhh, didn't tell you? I saw another doctor that said it wouldn't be necessary.”
I think I slept crying in disbelief. I woke up the next morning to check my call logs to be sure it wasn't just a dream.
When that woman prayed for her sister, I went straight back to 2015. I could relate. I won't deny that it destroyed me again, but I prayed for a miracle for them.
