As the world celebrated ‘International Women’s Day’, I was reminded of a woman whom I admire and salute for the manner in which she lived her life, taking life by the scruff of its neck, and looking at it in the eye, whatever it meted out to her—diamond or stone, bouquets or brickbats. My brother and I were placed under the tutelage of this lady and her husband as teenagers. Life wasn’t a bed of roses for this couple. The path on which they trod was strewn with many a thorn, nevertheless they did so circumspectly yet uncomplainingly, hand in hand. We brothers watched it with a great deal of admiration and respect, and sometimes even astonishment.
The lady, to us, seemed the stronger. As storms of life hit them relentlessly, she trudged through them all, lending her shoulder to her husband to lean on with unceasing prayers on her lips, and clutching on to faith in God that seemed to grow with each beating. Anybody else would have yelled and murmured at the odds, and against the power we all call God who we believe metes them out to lesser mortals—so we brothers thought.
The setbacks, be it the death of her son to cancer in his thirties to the death of the companion of her lifetime, which left her widowed, were taken by her with remarkable equanimity. It is not that she never wept. But with every tear, she tightened her unflagging grip around dependence on God and His grace, which was the fortress to which she would flee in times of trial. Never did those words ‘Lord, why me?’ escape her lips, not even once.
In these times when precious lives are taken by people themselves, I remember the grit with which this lady took life by its horns, with courage that seemed to grow with every challenge. Her equanimity amidst the mayhem is something worthy of emulation. This remarkable lady’s prayerful poise, I must admit, stood me in good stead in times of many a personal trial. I was struck with a stroke at 39 out of the blue, putting paid to my surgical career. The sudden turn of events for the worse had me grappling with moments of extreme anxiety and depression.
She attempted to have my attention drawn to silver linings that draped the dark clouds that had plunged my life into darkness. The words of my maternal grandmother, made in her efforts to bolster her oldest grandchild’s spirit that seemed to wither before an illness that seemingly wrecked his life in a second, “Sunny, don’t be ungrateful to God” still rings in my ear today.
Dr George Jacob Email: earaly@hotmail.com