I had a beautiful afternoon with Clarisse. We sat in the living room sipping lemonade while looking at pictures of her Canadian family. We looked at pictures of mom and dad, Sarah and Rob, Koko, Darren and the llamas in the backyard (no, she has never seen such a creature). I blessed her with gifts from home including cold tablets and a Costco sized bottle of ibuprofen.
She in turn blessed me with her story of hope and thanks despite an extremely stressful and trying year. Last summer, Clarisse’s brother was the driver of the agri project truck that crashed killing, four people and seriously injuring our brother, breaking his pelvis in three places. Shortly after he was released from the hospital, two months later, Clarisse’s aunt Maggie died. Maggie had raised Clarisse from infancy and was truly her mom. I knew she was very sick, even during my visit last year, and spoke to Clarisse the day she passed, but I never heard the details until today. I asked Clarisse if she passed in peace and Clarisse told me that she did. In fact, she knew in the morning that was going to die that day and she asked Clarisse to stay near to her, to read Psalms, to pray with her, to sing to her and to not bother with any more medicine, food or IV liquids. She knew she was “going home” as she told Clarisse. In the end Maggie’s sister (Clarisse’s mom), her mother and Clarisse were in the room when she took her last breath. They were able to hold her in her final moments and bury her in her home village across the border in Cameroon. As she told the story I was torn between sorrow and joy. I know that she is missed tremendously here, you can hear it in Clarisse’s heart and I feel it in my own. But the joy that Maggie displayed and the peace in which she passed is cause for joy, and I can only pray that when my own time comes it will be with such grace and peace.
