Finding Pax...

Finding Pax, finding peace, even finding a moment of joy

This is the story of Saturday 12 February, our 3rd day of searching for Pax. As it's written after the fact, I ramble somewhat...

I dragged myself out of bed in the morning. This was all very emotionally and physically exhausting. We were also still adjusting to the time difference from the UK. Getting up at 7 am was something like 1:30 for our body clocks. Rather like a patch of wakefulness in the middle of the night—something that is all too common for me—but without the luxury of being able to go back to sleep. Of course I’m not complaining, just describing how we felt. The heat and food was all so different too. I was very very tired but mercifully was not actually sick.

The taxi came later than we expected. Prabir popped down to tell us that “the Pastor” (Sandeep) had told the taxi he didn’t need to pick us up until 9 am, unlike the original plan of 8, because nowhere opened that early anyway. Because we didn’t have a local phone line, a lot of the time there were communications going on around us but not through us, and we would only find out “later” what was “happening.” A minor inconvenience. We were being ushered through our journey with the utmost care and consideration; that in itself was a unique experience.

Perhaps you feel the breath of optimism in these paragraphs. I feel it now, knowing what the day was going to reveal, but at the time we were far from optimistic. I was struggling to hold back tears.

I didn’t want to have unrealistic expectations and then suffer a crushing disappointment at leaving Bhopal without our task accomplished. So when we picked up Sandeep and Joaquim, I explained that even if we couldn’t locate the right church, I would want to put a memorial cross or something in the main cemetery. If we couldn’t have it in the right place, at least we knew we were in the right city. That was not the ideal, but better than nothing. At least there would be something to show Pax had been there .

We drove into Bhopal. We passed the main cemetery, but didn’t stop. There was no point, as we knew it wasn’t the place.

The plan was to visit every church in a reasonable radius of the Hamidia hospital. However many there were, that’s how many we would visit.

It looked as though it was going to be a very hot, long day.

Our first stop was the St Francis Cathedral—what had been our first stop the night before. The men had discussed that perhaps Catholic priests had more autonomy and one could have buried Pax even without going through official channels. We didn’t know—and in fact I don’t know why we went there first. But the wonderful news is that was the only place we had to visit.

When we arrived we were invited in to speak with the young Father who had only been there about 3 years. The other, senior Father was out at a Bible conference.

Father Stanlio Jerry Anto ushered us in with an offer to sit down for some tea and to talk. He was the picture of hospitality; we were treated with respected and the real Christian virtues of kindness. We hadn’t even sat down before telling him our story and our quest, and we already heard his exclamation that, yes, years ago, they used to bury some people at the church. There was already a Catholic cemetery, however, once this was extended, there were no longer burials at the church.

Now we were excited! He took us out into the little back garden. It looks rather like a piece of waste land with a few trees but that’s because nothing will grow there. Various workers from the church were called, including some who had been born and grown up in the compound—it’s not just a church, but there is a school, and some very old accommodation.  One man would have been around the age of 8 when Pax was buried.

As Joaquim looked at the land, and the descriptions of the changes to the building, including the extensions and recently built kitchen, it all started to make sense.


Then he looked again at the front wall of the compound, where we had entered through a main gate, and saw the markings of a small entrance that had long since been bricked up. This was the small entrance that he remembered!

Quickly the geography of the place was confirmed. Quickly we returned to the plot of land. We were now standing more or less on the spot where Pax was buried. There were no markings, but what everyone said, and the mental pictures that Joaquim carried, confirmed it.

They went inside to take tea. I sat and cried for awhile; there was a chair provided thoughtfully.  Then I joined them. Everyone was astounded we had found the place!

More of the story began to unravel when Father Anto took us into the church proper, or should I say Cathedral. The large pillars were just what Joaquim remembered as having been inside of the church.  We went into the small back room behind the altar. Joaquim had remembered the priest coming out of this room to talk with him, and then going back in and coming back out with a coffin. That had seemed quite incredible; how could he have had a perfectly sized coffin on hand?

There was an explanation for this, which I think really confirmed the veracity of the whole history. We were told that years ago—and crucially during the time we were there before--the coffin makers and grave diggers used to live in the church compound. Coffins were made right here, so it was only natural one was found for Pax.

We went back out to the ground. We discussed putting up a cross. One of the workers said he could arrange it that same day. The Father asked if we would like prayers at the site. He was in touch with Father Swami, the senior priest. Of course I was very thankful! So we arranged to return at 4 pm. I was in a daze. We had found Pax’s burial site.

One other piece of information of note: Because this is the oldest church in Bhopal, and a Cathedral, it has been declared an archeological site. No changes will be made. The church, standing strong, standing long. Thank you, Jesus.

We drove with Sandeep to the church where it was planned that I’d be speaking the following day, and Simon would “entertain” the children. We had tea and talked with the pastor and the head of the Sunday School class.

Then we went to a local restaurant that Sandeep knew for lunch. Joaquim was eager to check out possibilities of leaving that day, after the memorial prayers, so he went off to find tickets. Sandeep went home to prepare for church the next day. So Simon and I went back to the church alone. On the way we stopped and bought a beautiful flower arrangement.

I wanted time to sit where Pax had been.

Then Father Swami came, and Joaquim arrived just in time, and we had formal prayers. Father Swami read the service in English. I cried some of the time. I was astonished when he started his short sermon and it was about the story that I have held onto and repeated to so many people in the past 21 months; the story of Jesus weeping with the two sisters, Mary and Martha. His message was that Jesus understands what it is to grieve and sympathised with the sisters.

It’s hard to express how much this story of Jesus and the two sisters has meant to me, as for many years one of the big blocks to me returning to Bhopal was the guilt I felt at “grieving.” It was as though if I believed in heaven, I had no right to feel sadness; it was only Pax’s “earthly remains” in Bhopal after all. That guilt has held me in; every time in the past 30 years that I was seriously contemplating how to make the trip to Bhopal (because I always without fail intended to do it someday), the guilt over my grief held me in its grip.  There were also practical obstacles to going to Bhopal—lack of finances, feeling like it was a priority to be there for Catherine, work, the “unknown” of a journey to a place halfway across the world that I had only spent 24 hours in. Bhopal isn’t exactly on the tourist trail and it wasn’t somewhere I could travel to directly. And where would I stay, and how would I find Pax? No, it wasn’t only guilt that delayed this journey, but the guilt was a part of it.

The guilt came from a variety of sources. The first, initial guilt over crying at Pax’s death, was from H1. The extended guilt came from being in the company of so many religious people over the years. Not that I want to knock religion, but especially evangelical-type people don’t always deal very well with death. Perhaps they ignore it? To be full of songs, praise and joyful worship is great in its time and place, but life isn’t always happy-clappy. The company I kept were mainly of the school of thought that if you weren’t happy and “positive” you were not on the right track. So how could I work through my grief? And the “older generation” also seem to take the view that you get on with life, you push the sad thoughts away, you “move on.” Yes, I was surrounded practically and emotionally by the “move on from sorrow” brigades of all descriptions, my own family included.  Then my sorrow about the loss of Pax became so deeply entrenched in my soul I could not even talk about him, lest it all came tumbling out, unstoppable.  I kept his pictures, I kept his “anniversary” day and birthday, but kind of secretly. My grief about Pax became part of who I was, but a part that was so private, nobody knew about it, even I didn’t realise how much it was affecting me.

When Catherine died, I had no more control over my grief. Whatever anybody or any church or any religion or any person on earth said, I didn’t care. My sorrow at losing Catherine was total and unstoppable, unmanageable in many respects. Losing Catherine also unloosed the suppressed grief at losing Pax. It was as though he had only just died; now I was grieving two children. It has been so confusing. Sometimes I was weeping for Catherine, sometimes I was weeping for Pax, sometimes I was weeping for myself at outliving both of my children. Sometimes I was weeping for the loss of my dreams, the loss of any possibility of grandchildren. Sometimes the pain of having been left childless seemed almost too much to bear. I came to some very dark places.

Unlike when I lost Pax, this time I would broach no talk of “being brave” or “at least they’re in heaven.” My children weren’t with me. They weren’t living out their lives. There was plenty of cause to be desperately sad. I expressed my grief in tears, in poetry, in writing (including this blog), gardening and art. If somebody was not going to be supportive of my need to work through my grief on my timetable, not theirs, then I didn’t want to see them or hear from them. I simply deleted emails that started out with some trite “positive” story rather than dutifully reading and responding.—Quite unlike my normal mode of operation.

On a spiritual level, I didn’t feel as though I even knew if God even existed. I didn’t know how to operate on a spiritual level any longer. After two thirds of a lifetime of prayer and dedication to serving God, I wasn’t even sure He was there.

But I kept searching, and I would go to church, any church, where I could take communion, the Lord’s supper. And in taking the Lord’s supper, I embraced the belief in Jesus once more. And slowly I started to find him again.

I can’t remember the point at which I read the story about Mary and Mary and “got the point.” But somehow, in that journey through grief, I found it. For anyone reading this who is not familiar with the story: Mary, Martha and Lazarus their brother were friends of Jesus. Lazarus got sick; they sent a message to Jesus to come and heal him, but he delayed. By the time he got there, Lazarus had died. Both Martha and Mary were rather reproachful towards Jesus, and then the scripture says, “Jesus wept.” He sympathised with the pain of their bereavement. (I wrote about this story on my website, www.mayihelp.co.uk, under the tab “Valley Journal”.)

Realising that Jesus did not condemn me for my grief helped me set me free. It has allowed me to grieve in peace. I did other things to deal with my grief, like going to a counsellor, and working on a journal/book. I had my days of crying, of staring into space, of utter despair. But in my heart I no longer felt that it was bad or wrong to be so sorrowful. I let the sorrow carry me, like the waves of the sea I’m enjoying in here in Goa.

Actually that’s a good example. I’m not a good swimmer (understatement) and have a fear of going out of my depth. When we got out in the sea here, I stand chest deep, and a gentle wave comes. At first I would stand in shallower water and the waves would crash into me, almost knocking me over, and that was not pleasant. But now I got the point (thanks Simon!) that if I am chest-deep, standing a bit further out, the waves buoy me up but don’t crash into me. They lift me off the seabed; I float up, which was a bit scary the first few times, but within seconds they put me back on the ground.

And that’s like sorrow. Instead of standing in shallow water and having it crash into me, I’ve voluntarily walked deeper into it, and I’ve let the waves buoy me up. A strange, unsettling feeling, without the security of feeling the ground underneath me, but the best way.

So back to the story of grief. If I have learnt anything I would tell anyone else it would be this: Let yourself be carried with the grief. Don’t care what other people say or how they expect you to behave. Survive in whatever way you can; cry when you need to. And if you’re a Christian, it doesn’t make a difference; it’s okay to cry, okay to search for comfort. “Weeping may endure for a night,” the scripture says. And it continues, “but joy comes in the morning.”  First the weeping endures. It’s easy to focus on the “joy comes” bit. But you can’t escape the weeping; only then can joy come. A night can be very long. Very very long. But hold on; the joy comes.

I didn’t think I would ever find the joy again. In the past 21 months I have had moments when I was peaceful but not one of inner joy. Until about four mornings ago. I had gone for an early morning walk by the seashore, before the heat of the day. I had listened on my MP3 player to my favourite “devotionals” from “Pray as you Go” (Jesuit site that I highly recommend). I had meditated and thought a lot about the story of the woman at the well (I’ll write about that another time.)

Now I was sitting in the shade at a beach “shack” or cafe run by a Christian woman named Maria. I was drinking tea and eating toast, listening to classical music on my MP3 player. The sea was sparkling in front of me; the sky a perfect blue. I looked at the waves folding into the shore, the gentle white surf. And at that moment, I felt joy.

When I came home and told Simon that I had felt joy, I started to cry. If you are a bereaved parent, you will understand what a big thing this was for me. If you’re someone who has suffered through difficulties or depression, you will understand, though if you’re a happy “normal” person, you might not get it. But for me, after a very long night of weeping, I had a moment of joy and it was bliss.

I’ve gone off track, so better get back to the memorial prayers at Pax’s graveside:

Going back to the story of the sisters, the deceased brother, and “Jesus wept:” –Perhaps now you can realise just how moved I was to hear the priest quoting that very same story, drawing that very same lesson. I have never heard anyone else preach that message, in fact, I had been “taught” a completely different interpretation.

So to hear Father Swami talk about Jesus sympathising, it renewed and strengthened my sense of the Lord’s mercy, His encouragement, sympathy, love. He does not condemn. It’s been so hard for me to receive his peace, his forgiveness, but step by step on this journey, I am finding it (as I just described!).

The Father completed his prayers. Then we were sprinkled with water. Then Joaquim asked if he could sing a song—the same he had sung all those years ago, when Pax was buried—and he sang “This little light of mine.” Wonderful voice.

We had already placed the flowers there, and I had lit the candle. The church worker told me later that he saw the candle burning all night.

Afterwards they invited us in for tea. When they told us that there was going to be an English mass the following evening, and I indicated I’d like to come for that, they extended an invitation for dinner. More to look forward to on Sunday.

Emotional and tired, we took our leave. We dropped Joaquim at the station and then went over to to Sandeep’s house.  We were served a delicious dinner. We filmed a few clips of Savita and Sandeep that we hope we can show back home. We were all tired but in a very good mood; purpose accomplished!

We didn’t stay too long as we knew we had another early start on Sunday.  And so we made it home, utterly exhausted, but I was feeling much better.