Opinion – Front Line: About being reborn

There was death, there was pain, there was silence. I was in the middle of the storm, trying to lighten the situation like the hummingbird in the fable, which splashed water with its beak to try to contain the forest fire. Many others, like me, did the same.

Anyway, with the drop in cases and deaths from Covid-19, I took a thirty-day vacation and returned to myself, in the backlands of Bahia.

After three years, I enjoyed Grandpa’s hug and blessing. Along the sandy paths things seemed more pleasant.

We visited the field to see the goats being raised, my children played with the goats and balanced on the back of the bay mare.

It was there that I met Grace. She was looking at my almost eight-year-old girl: it was the same as seeing her granddaughter, she said.

The girl spent eight months of the last year with her, from the village to the countryside, mingling.

Graça started to accumulate water in her eyes as she saw my daughter, she looked like I miss her.

Graça’s daughter, the child’s mother, died at thirty, another victim of the coronavirus, her father was unable to tell her about the death, there was an undeclared pact: nothing was said. It was better to spend a few days with her grandmother in the sertao.

For the wake, with all the protocols, closed coffin, they decided not to take the child. Graça did not say goodbye to her daughter, but took over her child.

On one occasion, a lady died of cancer in the nearby village of Alojamentoí, and both were invited to the wake.

While they were getting ready, the girl asked definitively: will this hospital never hear from a mother again?

Mom news.

Not.

The grandmother took a deep breath and searched for words.

Mom is dead like that woman, love. She went to heaven, so is grandpa.

The little creature was crestfallen in the following moments. In the village, she picked three flowers and kept them throughout the lady’s wake.

As the coffin was lowered into the earth, the girl approached.

This little flower is for you; this is for my mom. She kissed and placed the flower to her breast before throwing it into someone else’s grave; this one is for grandpa.

After that day they could talk about it, so the child and Graça supported each other more closely. When the girl was better for her return, her father went to get her and took her back to the distant city.

When we said goodbye, Graça looked into my girl’s eyes once more, with pain and tenderness.

The caatinga was exuberant, green, there has been rain in recent times. Anyone who saw them, Graça and the caatinga, could conclude that life imposes unlikely beginnings, despite everything.