Category: Personal

A Jon Post

It has been one full week since the last time I carried him.

One week since my arms held his small frame, heavy in spirit, slight in body.

Paulo first spoke to me as a jovial interruption to my conversation with his ward-mate, Orlando. Orlando had arrived from a distant town and his doctor had asked me to consider inviting him to Casa Ahava, as his journey with cancer and treatment still had many months, perhaps years, yet to be trod. Paulo’s happy voice butted into my chat with Orlando and I turned to see (not simply look) in his direction. He was a short man, a ready smile found his face as he told me about how hard it has been to live in Urology and how he hoped it would be an easier stay here in the oncology ward. Perhaps it was my laziness, or maybe my impatience but I did not immediately take to Paulo, despite his friendliness. His demeanor eschewed confidence and a right to be heard and I balked at his demands of my attention and respect.

When Orlando came to live at Casa Ahava one week later, I asked him if he liked Paulo and if he would like it if I invited Paulo to come stay here too. You see, though Paulo’s home was comparatively closer than was Orlando’s, the hostility of rural Mozambican roads meant that, for practical purposes, Paulo’s home was inaccessibly far. Orlando’s response, merrily acknowledging Paulo’s penchant for chatter, was to ask in earnest for the invitation to be extended.

So in November of 2021, Paulo came to Casa Ahava and to my family.

His quick wit, his total lack of decorum, and his unwillingness to feel ashamed made him an instant hit.

For those who carry it in their body, Cancer, as an insidious custom, tries to force the trade of dignity and humanity for shame and barbarism. Paulo utterly refused that trade. His insistence on his own dignity, his own worth, and his own voice was unshaken.

But Cancer lingers.

Full of optimism and pride, Paulo visited his herds of cattle and goats over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The brutality of the dirt and gravel roads to and from his land returned him to us sick, pained, and weary on his arrival at Casa Ahava in January.

What we knew in test tubes, blood results, and biopsies in November made itself clear in fevers, pain, and fatigue in January: Paulo was dying. In November and December, I had conversed with him about the test results and the abstract of his dying several times. In January, over the haze of opiates and the weariness of blood loss, our conversations were not abstract. In spite of Tramadol’s deleterious effects on the mind and the body, Paulo’s smile remained. When I asked him if he would consider going home to die, he affirmed that while he wanted to die and be buried there, he wanted to stay in Casa Ahava until the doctors at the hospital told him there was nothing left to do.

But dying lingers.

Paulo spiked a fever again but 5 days of IV antibiotics and 3 liters of blood served only to weaken his already weak body. We waited too long. Much like the first day I met him, I sat bedside with Paulo, but this time, his voice was shaky and raspy, not strong and confident.

“Where do you want to die, Paulo? Here in the hospital, or at my home?” I asked him, with tears in my eyes.

He re-affirmed he wanted to go home, if only he could gather the strength for the journey.

I looked him in the eye and said, “Paulo, today you have more strength than you will have tomorrow. Tomorrow, you will have more strength than the day after. Today is as strong as you will feel for the rest of your life. Could you travel the road home, today, now, as you are?”

He smiled…

He smiled at me in his dying.

Because you see…

Dying lingers.

“No, Jon.” He said, “I do not have the strength for that road.”

“Where do you want to die, Paulo? Here in the hospital, or at my home?” I repeated.

“Here, the food is no good, Jon. I want to come to your home and eat xima.” Paulo’s smile was unwavering.

So home he came. It took only 3 days for him to lose the strength to walk. That was the first time I carried him.

One day more for his tongue to forget Portuguese and revert to Shangaan. That was when he started looking for home.

“Ni mooka”, he stammered in Shangaan, “I am going home”. “Ni famba”, again “I am going”.

“Not yet, brother”, I replied in a broken mix of Portuguese and Shangaan, offering the xima and stewed greens he had asked for, not knowing it would turn out to be his last true meal.

But dying lingers.

In delirium and frustration with the loss of his strong body, Paulo tried several times to heave his broken body off the unfamiliar bed in which he found himself. Home, the call of his spirit and internal compass urged him to try again and again. Several times I acceded to his hallucinatory demand to look out the door to his room, around the corner, and try to find home. Into my arms and to my chest he would cling, as he anxiously peered out the door, then, in a confused and frustrated resignation, he would allow me to return him to his bed.

But dying lingers, still.

Seven days, Paulo lay dying on his bed. Death’s scent and weight both lay heavy on his sheets and my skin. Seven days, my wife and I kept watch and bore faithful witness to both the urgency and the latency with which Death lay siege on Paulo’s body and soul.

Ghosts danced in our room.

Saints and ancestors, clouds of witnesses, spirits holy and foul.

But dying lingers, still.

Layne’s gentle hand under his, fingers interlaced, assured him he was not alone nor need he be afraid.

The day he died his eyes returned from the haze of delirium and the liminal space where death and life both overlap, and they met mine; he smiled at me one more time.

That night, in spite of great expense in both time and money, and in an effort to honor his deep desire to die at home and to honor the traditions of their people, his brother and sisters arranged for a vehicle to drive his failing body and fading spirit to their family land. Paulo would go home after all.

So one week ago, I carried him one last time and lay him as gently as I could in that car to begin that journey home.

Dying ceased lingering and found Paulo on that road.

Today I am sitting in the room where Paulo lay dying one week ago. I still smell the death-smell, I still hear his voice, and I still feel his skin against my hands.

My children are playing Legos on the floor.

The window through which Paulo whistled in harmony with a visiting kingfisher is letting light dance across the bed where he lay dying last week. I think my grief is looking for a home in that dancing light; playing across the mattress where my friend lost his voice but not his smile, remembering the weight of him in my arms.

For you see… grief lingers too.

But I’ve come to believe that a man of sorrows, familiar with grief, may linger in places with which he is familiar.

Maybe the places most familiar are somehow akin to the places called home. And if He is at home in a place where we mourn… well, what’s more comforting than being at home with the ones we love?

Casa Ahavá has been on a bit of a bumpy road as of late. Coming home from our furlough we grew to 14 patients at lightening speed, bringing in multiple new patients on the same days. Despite our excitement of a full house, we quickly noticed that the community needs slower transition in order to keep the rhythms we work hard to establish. The result was a week or two of chaos and dissension, some tears, and some hard family meetings. In the future, we will make our intake slower, which we believe can ease some of these tensions.

We also discovered during this time that our infrastructure was not equipped for the 20 people living on the property (14 patients and 6 in my family). Our septic tanks began overflowing into the yard! Yuck. Wednesday, thanks to a generous family who donated, we started construction on an additional tank, which should solve the problem.

Another problem was our kitchen set up. The pots needed to cook for such large numbers were too big for the hot plates currently used. We decided we needed to add a gas stove option outside. Do you know who met this need? A teenager. She heard about our growing and extra expenses and reached out to see if she could help with her hard earned money. I am awestruck.

An extra hiccup was our patient van broke the week we arrived home from the States and despite a month of trying to fix it, we were unable. Can you believe that one family made it possible to purchase our new patient van? The way our Christ-community has stepped in and carried this project is nothing short of glorious.

A few patients wrapped up their treatments, and we were able to send them home with all our love. We are currently down to 9 patients at the house. We have told the hospital to give us time to finish our septic tank before we we accept anyone new. The expectation is another two weeks or so.

The past week has been hectic health wise for a few patients. We have had an ER visit due to hemorrhaging, another bleeding episode, a severe case of delayed Chemo-induced vomiting (she is wrecked), stomach pains late at night, chills, a patient grieving a death in the family, etc.

We appreciate your prayers and love in this season; we feel it.

And now… the people who make it all so very worth it:

In expanding into our 17 beds at Casa Ahava, we have encountered some growing pains. It turns out our septic system simply cannot handle 20 people using it at once and we need to add capacity. It will cost roughly $4,000 USD to do this. Would you consider helping us raise the finances we need to do this?

Casa Ahava’s daily vehicle upon which we’ve relied for the last several years has come to an inglorious halt. The engine in our 2003 van simply gave up. In order to meet the ever-present needs of the men and women living at Casa Ahava, we make daily trips to and from our partners in the Maputo Central Hospital (usually the oncology ward). Layne has graciously made her family van available as we’ve scrambled in the wake of having no project vehicle but that leaves her and the Heller children without transportation every day we use it at the hospital. We have identified a good replacement for our previous vehicle, a 2008 van, which we hope will faithfully transport Casa Ahava patients wherever they need to go for the next several years. We need $6000 for this new (to us) vehicle. Would you consider helping us with this important part of our home for the sick and the dying?

If you can help with either, please click on the donate button below

Currently Raised:

UPDATE!!! New Van – $6000 of $6000 FULLY COVERED

UPDATE!!! Septic System Expansion – $4000 of $4000 FULLY COVERED

A Jon Post

The more I think about and hope to become more skilled at reflecting Christ to the sick and the dying the clearer it becomes that, despite the simplicity of the gospel, there is no simplicity in the practice it demands.

What is the good news to the 17-year-old boy living in my home whose lymphoma protrudes from his chest, his arm pit, his neck, and his ribs? What is the good news to the 43-year-old widow who lives in the liminal space between living and dying, unable to know if her cancer is growing as she does radiation therapy or receding? There are 14 men and women living in my home. Nearly all of them are unsure if they inhabit the land of the living or the land of the dying.

Please imagine that with me.

They sincerely do not know if the cancer detected in their bodies is responding to the poison dripped into their veins. The do not know if the speed-of-light radioactive particles ripping cell membranes and dignity to shreds is doing the same to their cancer, giving way to more living or simply prolonging an already prolonged dying.

So we wait in the unrestful place of helplessness.

Social workers and developmental experts like to talk and write about something they call “learned helplessness”. This is the idea that, after prolonged experiences of shock, pain, and betrayal, people and animals learn that “nothing they do matters”; there is no act, real or imagined, that could provide an escape from that shock, pain, or betrayal. Surprisingly enough, only within the past few years have researchers discovered that the original theory of “learned helplessness” was precisely backwards; that is, passivity in response to shock is the default, and that we learn that we can escape from that shock or pain. We learn control, we learn that we have power, we learn that escape may depend on our own responses and actions (if you are interested in this, there is a very neat article here about it). I’ve realized that it has become important that I unlearn helpfulness in many of the ways I serve at Casa Ahavá.

I mention the above because it seems important to me to enter deeply the spiritual reality (my paragraph about Christ and the gospel), the soul/psychological reality (the above paragraph about learned helplessness), and now I’d like to enter with you into the corporeal reality (our bodies, our dust, our fingerprints).

So why helplessness? Well, as I mentioned above, our psyche seems to begin with the assumption that we are helpless. With all of our modern medical advances (at least in North America and in Europe), it turns out our bodies still die. No matter how much we internalize the idea that we are not helpless, no one has yet found a way not to die. We can try and try to learn that we are not helpless, yet there comes a door through which we all pass on our way into our dying.

That door is helplessness. No act, real or imagined, will keep us from the land of the dying.

In Casa Ahavá, in our world of the sick and the dying I ask you to please imagine with me the helplessness of not knowing whether you are living or you are dying. Perhaps you, dear reader, have had cancer or have walked alongside someone who has. Maybe it was Krohn’s disease. Maybe it was HIV/AIDS. Maybe it was Parkinson’s. Maybe it was Alzheimer’s. If you have walked the paths of those dark forests, you may have come across this painful realization: You were taught a lie. You were taught that helplessness is wrong and that there is always an escape. You learned helpfulness. In an age of power and control, someone has tried to convince us that they can be delivered into our own hands.  

Is this important to you, dear reader? Is this stuff ok? I truly don’t want to bore you with this but it has felt more and more urgent for me to know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings (back to the spiritual reality, right?) and this seems like an important pathway through that dark and confusing forest.

So what connects helplessness to the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings? I’d like to quote just a few verses of Scripture here, if you will be so kind as to bear with me:

He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

    Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

    for the transgression of my people he was punished

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

    and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer

Isaiah 53:7-10

Does that sound like helplessness to you? It does to me. The man to whom this prophecy refers had all power and authority laid before his feet… and he chose helplessness. He chose to be led away, silent, without protest, crushed, and suffering.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with a 23-year-old boy dying with cancer with a large open wound which has taken away his ability to walk. The cancer has robbed him of his dignity, his privacy, and his strength. And I can give none of that back to him. No action of his or my own, real or imagined, can provide escape from his affliction.

Today I looked a 17-year-old in the eyes as he showed me another painful lump protruding from his flesh and I could not tell if the mass under his skin was greater or smaller than the fear in his face.

For you see, I have no power here. I am helpless.

A wise man recently told me that the whole arc of the Passion narrative bends toward helplessness. Who then am I to seek power and control (helpfulness) when Christ gave those up?

To those of you reading this who pray with us, partner with us, are participants in this broken-to-be-given project that is Casa Ahavá, I say this: The blessing of serving in Mozambique is to become more comfortable with the spiritual reality of helplessness. So: here we are; send us.

Jon continues to serve in the Covid unit at the central hospital encouraging and supporting their emotional/spiritual health as needed. Mozambique’s numbers are rising and thus the strain on the staff as well. We are trying to be creative in thinking of new ways to love them.

Casá Ahava feels busy and alive. We did some much needed maintenance around the place over the holiday, while patients went home to enjoy the end of the year with their families.

Meet our current patients at Casa Ahavá:

In other news, Jon’s cousin Caleb came to visit over the holidays and help us renovate a small veranda into a new consult/bandage changing room! His church back in Tennessee helped fund the whole thing. AMAZING! We have since started regular meeting with our patients, connecting about symptoms and well-being. I think they are feeling more seen, heard, and loved!

Finally, starting on Monday we are excitedly beginning renovations on a small room outside, which is currently used as Jon’s tool-house. For some time we have noticed that our current men’s side usually sits with 2-4 beds open, while there is a line at the hospital waiting for women’s beds. When we created the project it seemed natural to do 6 women’s beds and 6 men’s beds, however, the need is unequal. We are going to turn the new space into a 4 bed room with an en-suite bathroom, so that the current men’s side can be transitioned to another women’s side. When the project is complete we will be able to offer 12 women’s beds and 4 men’s bed in addition to our hospice in the our home. It feels like a natural and proper step and we are thankful as the Lord blesses each step we’ve taken.

Thank you for your unwavering love and support, even in such a trying time around the world. Lord willing, we will travel to the United States in June and look forward to visiting with as many of you as we possibly can!