Death From Inside

Compassion is something I learned how to have recently.

I care a lot now.

So when my flatmate's girlfriend's sister committed suicide today, I felt a lot.

She's dead. I saw her just the other day. Friends saw her this morning. She seemed fine. Living life. She had transferred in this semester.

I've encountered a little death before. I've been to one funeral where I actually saw the body, but I hadn't met that man ( recent uncle in-law) before. In Uganda, I shadowed doctors as they worked on a patient who died the night that I was learning about his case. And last semester, of course, I worked with cadavers.

But this is much more tangible. Her face is there in my mind.

I'm in school to be a medical missionary, and the thought of those patients in Uganda drive me more toward school and learning to be able to help them. But I often forget that I can help people without that training. My uselessness in the hospitals made me need to do something to be able to help them, but there are those who are hurting from emotional and spiritual pains. And I can help them.

I can work all day and night forever to make people well, but if the turmoil is within the spirit, no amount of medicine will ever cure them, and they may do as this young woman did and cut it all short.

I love/hate that I know how to care now, how to feel the hurt that can only result from love.