Author: Jon

A Jon Post

The sun was just starting to push the grey out of the windscreen and we were stuck in morning traffic on our way to the hospital. I hadn’t slept well the previous night and the coffee in my travel mug steamed up and out of the little pour spout as I sipped its bitter wake-up call. We slowly made our way into the city with the rest of the cars that surrounded us, speeding up and slowing down as little spaces opened, making the car’s motor pulse in long, drawn out beats like a dying mechanical heart.

“We have a song in my language, Jon.” Eliza was telling me, and she started an eerie hymn in the Ndão language. Her voice rose and fell like our car’s speedometer, and her heart sang out a refrain in her tribe’s ancient tongue that sent a chill and a peace into my spirit at the same time. Her song whispered to a stop. She explained in Portuguese so I could understand;

“This song says that you never know who will carry you to the place where you will die. We all expect it to be our father or our friend or our son or daughter but only Mwallee (God) knows. Only Mwallee knows the place and only Mwallee knows who will carry you there.”

So there I sat, in morning traffic. Driving a dear saint to the hospital where her hopes hang by spider silk threads to the idea that she may see her 7 month pregnant daughter again.

But this post wasn’t supposed to be about Eliza.

It’s about a 23 year old man named Rosario.

See, when Eliza sang about Mwallee and being carried, I was thinking about Rosario.

He arrived at the hospital about 7 weeks ago. He was gravely ill. His abdomen was dangerously swollen and in his eyes fear and pain jostled each other for position.

He smiled when he introduced himself to me.

I stood at the foot of his hospital bed and tried to ask a little about his home and his family. He spoke briefly but I saw the strain it took to respond and noticed pain winning the contest in his eyes. I whispered that he should rest and asked him if I could pray for him. I knelt beside him and whispered a prayer that I’ve whispered far too many times and gripped his hand softly then left.

He got worse.

Though pain dominated the fight in his eyes the fear never really gave up. There were some good days and on those days I was able to hear him laugh.

They were precious few but still very good days.

One day as I arrived he was being wheeled up to the oncology ward in a wheel chair. Oncology is on the second floor of the building it’s in. There is no elevator. Rosario sat slumped in his wheel chair and made no move to stand or struggle up the stairs. His eyes showed no fight, only pain.

I put my head under his arm and tried to help him stand and make his way back to his bed. He shuffled his feet for maybe three steps and then his legs gave way and I pulled him tight against my shoulder to keep from falling with him back down the stairs.

So into my arms he came. My left arm around his shoulders, my right hooked behind his knees, we struggled up the steps. Alice, our dear friend and partner walked out of oncology at that moment and rushed to help support his weight. We made our way down the corridor, through a small door where Alice had to briefly let go so Rosario and I could pass through the opening, and finally to his bed. He made no move to even roll over and make himself comfortable. He simply lay there in his sweat and pain, breathing and squinting his eyes, trying to hold pain at bay.

It was the day I carried Rosario that floated hauntingly through my head as Eliza sang her beautiful psalm on the way to the hospital.

Though Rosario had better days since that one, he did not have many.

His best days came long before this sickness. Some days he walked his father’s farm in the northern Mozambican province called Tete. Some days he played soccer with his friends in the field out behind his school. Some days he carried his little sister around the family property while his mother pounded corn into corn meal and made porridge for his family. Some days he went to mass at church and knelt before a Holy God. Some days he laughed and ran from the old man down the street who shook his walking stick at him and his friends for stealing lettuce from his farm. Some days he lied, some days he spoke truth, some days he hurt others, some days he offered grace and humility, some days he prayed, some days he cursed… and in all those days he was whole and strong and smiling. Those were his good days. Those are the days he remembered, even as he approached his last day.

He died on Saturday night. He died in the place I carried and laid him.

In Rosario’s 23 years of life he knew many men and women. He had the love of his father, mother and two sisters and his Savior. And mine.

Mwallee has honored me by trusting me with this humble office; I got to carry Rosario to the place where he died.

A Jon Post

Good mothers love their sons. Pedro’s mother is a good mother. When he got to the hospital 2 and a half months ago with his leg swollen and the skin splitting from the pressure she was by his side, without a thought. When he laughed she was near enough to hear his laughter; when he wept, she caught his tears.

So last week when he had surgery to remove his left leg she desperately wanted to hold his hand through it all.

He was wheeled out of the oncology ward at 6 AM on Wednesday and she was told he would be back when it was over. She was told she couldn’t go with him. So she sat in a chair in the hallway of oncology and waited.

For 8 hours.

When I got there, having known of his scheduled surgery I saw her and asked how he was. Her red and puffy eyes looked at mine and she told me she knew that he had left at 6 and that was all. She didn’t know where the operating room was; she didn’t know where the recovery room was; she didn’t know anything except that she had been told to wait for him to be brought back with only one leg.

I have visited a few other patients in the past who were pre or post-surgery over in the surgery ward so I offered to accompany her there and see if we could find him. She responded immediately with a hurried “yes” and rushed out of the ward, looking back to see if I had followed and if I could show her the way to the surgery ward. She even forgot her mobile phone in her rush and dashed back in to grab it so we could be on our way.

In the surgery ward we checked one wing… nothing. Another wing… nothing. A third and forth brought us no further in our search and no closer to Pedro. When a nurse in the fifth and final wing of the surgery ward suggested he might still be in the operating room Pedro’s mother immediately suggested we go find the operating block and see if we could find him.

I haven’t been there in the hospital and had no idea what building it was in but off we went, asking for direction from different hospital staff as we went.

We arrived at the surgery block’s entrance and in big, red, bold letters a sign made it clear that, under no circumstances were non-staff to enter those doors. Pedro’s mother clutched my arm and asked if I would try.

I shrugged… “Heck, I don’t know anyone in there” I thought, “What’s the worst that can happen? Someone yells at me and tells me to leave? That’s worth trying to help a mother find her son.”

So through those doors I went. Yep, someone yelled at me and told me to leave. I briefly explained that I was trying to help a mother find her son and a quick, “Go back out those doors and I’ll let you know if he’s here in a minute” was the response.

Well, 10 minutes outside those doors with no news I went back in. Pretty much the same result. I only waited 2 or 3 minutes this time and on my third attempt I found someone who stopped and listened to the plea of a desperate mother. He recognized Pedro’s name and actually knew about him. Pedro was still in surgery but was only minutes away from being done.

We waited.

We waited.

After 30 minutes of watching the doors for a stretcher to come out with Pedro on it his mother paused and looked at me.

“Did you hear that?” She asked.

“Hear what?” I replied.

“Pedro just yelled ‘Mother!’”

Through two stories of concrete and steel she could hear her son crying out for her. At first I was tempted to disbelieve that this supernatural hearing was real and was about to write it off as a mother who was hearing things.

But Pedro’s mother is a good mother.

Yes… she heard her son calling out to her. Mom’s can hear those things, even through 2 floors of hospital.

And 15 minutes later the doors opened and a stretcher with Pedro’s worn and tired body came rolling out. We followed the stretcher to the recovery room where I almost got us kicked out for trying to force them to allow her to spend the night with him and expressing my frustration a bit too candidly with the policy of not allowing her to come in and sit with her son.

Thursday, the next day she was able to visit him. She hadn’t slept the night before.

I saw them both the next day, him for just a few minutes, the last of the visiting hour allowed. His drawn face was smiling at his mother.

He has a long road still to travel and, though he only has one leg of his own to do it on, his mother’s two strong legs will suffice to carry him when they need to.

She’s a good mother.

A Jon Post

I have a confession to make; I’m not great at my job. I have been doing it for 3ish years now and I’m still learning quite a bit each time I go in.

My Job: Talk to sick people.

That’s it. That’s really all I do. I go in and talk to sick people about home, about the farm, about my family, about their families, about life… about death, about Christ, about hope. And after 3ish years I’m still learning how to do it.

Last week I was reading the Bible with 4 sick men. Awhile back I was given a bunch of Portuguese New Testaments by my friend and partner Jorge Pratas, and I had distributed them to these men recently. Xavier (pronounced Sha-vee-AIR) had been reading from Matthew 5 and so we opened to that passage together and read Jesus’ teaching commonly referred to as the “Beatitudes”.  After reading verse 4 we talked about what it means to be comforted and how that promise can come true. As we talked about that, one man in the room, Bernando, spoke honestly about the comfort he needs when he thinks about dying from his cancer. Realizing that I wanted to have more preparation for that question, I spoke briefly on the subject, told him I wanted to come back another day and talk about what the Bible says about his fear, and we continued in Matthew 5.

Two days later, as Layne and I worshiped God together I felt Him moving on my heart to remember what I had told Bernando and to search the Bible for places he could find comfort in his fear. Layne helped and we found many scriptures that talked about God’s promises in and after death. I’ve been doing this for 3ish years and this whole time I’ve known that I want be able to speak about God’s comfort to the dying. It’s not an easy thing to broach the subject of death when someone is still clinging to the hope of health and life. With Post-Its™ stuck in my Portuguese Bible, I headed to the hospital praying that God would guide me in the conversations that were coming.

I arrived, I greeted, I exchanged news on family at home, I sat on Bernando’s bed with him.
“Can I talk to you about the fear you mentioned two days ago Bernando?” I asked, tentatively.
And we dove in together. Psalm 116 talks about David’s intense desire and worship for his Lord as he is brought close to death… then he utters the phrase “The Lord cares deeply when His loved ones die.”
We read John 14:1-4 and talked about knowing the way to the Father’s house.
And as I was reading John 14 with Bernando, Xavier and Lorenço, I realized that there is a Biblical character who knew of his impending death, knew of his coming suffering, knew of the pain that lay before him and pleaded with the Father to miraculously save him from those things. The answer to his prayer was an angel to strengthen him, and a deafeningly silent “No”.
Jesus Christ knows how it feels to look over the cliff into the suffering below and look at his death at the bottom and he knows what it means to for his heart to anguish over the silence of the Father.
And this Jesus Christ… this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, this man is the mediator between us and the Father.

He knows… he knows.

And there is comfort in that.
So as my tears welled in my eyes and leaked down my cheeks, I told my friends we pray to a God who hates their suffering more than they. And at times He answers our prayers the way he answered David’s in Psalm 116.
Other times He answers like He answered Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
But he, himself, knows what it means in both cases.

So I’m still learning how to have these conversations.

I have a good teacher.