To Heal Without Medicine

The male young experience of that money gone, no medicine for this month, seizures are likely to happen. Triggers include hunger, stress, exhaustion. And all was this: the body I saw on the ground, alone. He was seizing, foaming, shaking, he was. My mother stopped, a mother stopped to check on the body. I only after, the daughter, not yet responsible for the care of another being, young enough to fear for her life instead of a boy on the road, sick he may be, but he is a boy, and it is not safe.

Guilt straight to the left of my chest for not having known to stop. For not having known enough about epilepsy like my pharmacist mother. It was his medicine that he needed, laying on the ground in worn-out slippers and jeans on the cobblestone, from which 500 cm away, the cars driving towards and away. Close to the corner to my grandmother’s home, towards the church that is just in front of her house, and that corner many had died at. Speeding cars taking lives, and last time we heard a deacon was murdered by a man we called… menfes new yemihonew. The deacon, a part of the church my grandmother communally prayed at her early mornings, listening to his voice amongst the priests, her chin on the church walking stick, standing there for the many hours of the daily holy ceremony.

Such are the prayers that we say have blessed us so, and kept the blessings to close the open wounds of our family. And such are the prayers my mom follows, calling the names of her children, veiling herself in humility, giving in hopes and faith that our care and safety be in the hands of God. She knows no amount of fear, love, and care can hold us in peace forever. She trusts all that will come and continue to come will be for a greater purpose. She reminds me of the stories of myself, I paraphrase to her what I feel as mistakes, and she says it was for a greater purpose, “cause you are better now.” In sickness and health, I am better now.

In sickness, that boy had no one beside him, until strangers came to carry his body beside the pavement on the soil, which most of the poor slept on, homeless through the night. I half ran to buy a soda, sugar he needed, said the pharmacist in her. A few gulps later I recall her asking him the name of his medication and if he took the three milligrams, and the price at which he bought it. He said at Saris. Later he told us that was where he lived. I know much about the pharmacies and the heartbreaking reality of the lack and unaffordability and the expenses, and she recalled the ones she knew of around Saris with reasonable prices. The price was 800 for a month-long dosage.

I couldn’t have been the one asking him for the information needed. I felt compelled to remember the times I was sick or my brothers. Their worries, more to worry about instead of the physical pain, mental anguish for hurting them too. Ideally we could have handed him the medication from the pharmacy right behind us, but we know it is 50 percent more of the price from where he usually got it. “Hold on to the money,” someone beside us said as he gave him a thousand, five notes of money less it holds tomorrow than his today. The instability that we ground ourselves upon is shaky grounds that would have deranged so many. His life foreign to mine, more stories foreign to him.

Food was the last thing we gave him. Rummaging in my grandma’s kitchen, we placed as much on a plate and it was my mom who ran back to him. I stayed there with my grandma. As always, she was sitting on her veranda. And I started thinking of medications. I have hypothyroidism, a very mild case, but I know of the finances that it takes for the regular blood tests, doctor’s visits, medications we get from abroad, better to buy in bulk for the year. And the more we spend for my brothers and grandma: indigestion, headaches… relief medications.

Poverty is a decision from somewhere over an ocean or borders. It is that money that didn’t go to those who needed it, how corruption stole the load, broke the path, and here we are. Swimming with the ocean of stress and worry up to our necks, lungs that can only breathe for ourselves and family. How to breathe, how to eat… how to have a good time.

Fool no one with the promise of hell lest good deeds be done. Don’t speak to me about delayed punishments, death a whisper away, the good life passing away. Speak not of your faith to explain away the confusion.

Your heart may know the burden of lack so great it pulls you from the living—to become only a body walking through life.

Talk to me not about losses when you don’t know. I dare not think, but I do dare to say: God, as you have enough, I wonder how you can watch this all. I know my greedy nature. After writing this, how often will I think of the boy? We might never meet again, but I needed to tell this story. It weighs heavy on me.

As it should for us all. I feel it is wrong to sleep in peace. Someone else also lacks it.