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Death on Christmas Day

Ann Grosh-King

I will never forget our first Christmas in Ethiopia. Our “home” was carved out of a grain warehouse. My husband Jerry directed a feeding centre, and I provided nursing care at a clinic as well as to persons staying in shelters on our compound. We saw sickness, malnutrition and death until we felt we had absorbed as much pain as we were able to. We felt helpless to do much, but we tried to be willing to carry people’s hurts in our hearts.

Western Christmas was coming (Ethiopians celebrate Christmas January 7), and we were looking forward to a bit of relief and at least one day of rest. I needed a day with no responsibilities and no “interruptions”. We had saved some canned foods with which to make a special Christmas lunch. I would read, maybe write some letters. I would enjoy just being with Jerry. But it wasn’t to be.

On Christmas Day, I heard the crunching of stones, then a knock at the door. A woman was waiting, carried by neighbours on a bed of skin supported by poles. They had walked up to our 9,000-foot ridge from the valley below. The woman was pregnant, ready to deliver, they said, and in a coma. We took her into our small, very basic clinic, and I examined her. I could feel the baby’s head in the birth canal. And then the woman died. She was only in the clinic 10 minutes.

I was angry with the men who had brought her. Why hadn’t they brought her sooner? I was angry with the woman for dying with the unborn baby still within her. I was angry most of all that she had to come on Christmas Day – the day I had planned for my emotional refuelling, a day to celebrate life and the gift of Jesus, not death. I had no room in my heart for this woman on this day.

As the day wore on, I began wondering why I had thought Christmas Day should only be for life, for good things, for happy thoughts, with no room for pain or hurt. Where had I gotten such an idea? How could I have been so “protected”? Was I willing to “spoil” my day with another’s misery? Was I willing to serve this woman and her family even on Christmas Day?

It’s only now, years later, that I understand God gave me a gift that day in the form of a dying woman. This gift shattered my delusions about what I had thought Christmas should be. This gift helps me see in a new way that Christmas is a generous love-gift to a dying world that must be continually disappointing to God. This gift challenges me to have room in my heart and in my plans to serve those who are sent to me at Christmas.

This article was distributed Oct. 6, 1998 as a Mennonite Central Committee news release.

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Last modified December 6, 2000.

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