Hot Saliva before you vomit

Friday and Saturday brought a bad mood.

Sunday and Monday brought a lack of interest- No desire to be in the house, at the football pitch, at work, or at the orphanage.

But still, I could feel no sadness. I was numb, I had never felt that before, I felt nothing.

Even talking to a friend on the phone yesterday my words were hollow. I spoke about Yaw’s death as if it were a television show-maybe with even less passion than that.

Even today the lack of interest persisted but I forced myself to go to the football pitch.

But it was tonight that the numbness started to fade.

After leaving the football pitch I ran into Laurie (the woman who is adopting from Osu Children’s Home). It was inevitable-she brought up Yaw. After learning that I hadn’t even found out until a week after his death AND from a volunteer who blurted it out like it were the score of a football match she started apologizing. She was torn that she had forgotten to call me and that’s when she started telling me the story:

She said that he had fallen out of his wheelchair a few days earlier; that he had cut his mouth open when he hit the pavement-

They took him to the doctor for his cut but he was in too much pain to eat-he was starving-

Two days after his fall she could see his soul leaving him-he was hollow- “he just looked so tired and needed to let go”

Thursday night he died in his sleep-

As they took his body away, Laurie gathered the boys for a prayer-they clapped for Yaw and released him to God.

This is when the numbness started to go. She stood up from her chair and embraced me. I felt my body convulse as she squeezed me as if she were the only thing keeping me together. She told me to let it out but I couldn’t. I clenched my teeth, swallowed the lump in my throat, and squeezed my eyes shut so that the tears wouldn’t come.

It is like right before you vomit when the hot saliva comes. Once you taste that hot saliva you know that it is only a matter of time before you vomit. How many times can you swallow that hot saliva before you throw up?

But I need to keep swallowing until I get home on Tuesday.

I can feel it rising within me; not just the pain from Yaw’s death but the feelings I have been swallowing about the kids at the home and my crumbling relationships with them. Flashes of when Victor died come to my mind and I am reminded of the paralyzing sadness that controlled me for months. I feel the anger, and sadness, and pain, and jealousy of other volunteers that have replaced me begin to rise up in my throat like bile.

Yesterday I didn’t think I would ever feel it; that I had just become used to death; but tonight as I prepare to go to sleep I will continue to swallow this hot saliva praying that I can make it a week before I vomit.