“…if only you knew who you were, if only you knew what was in store for you, you would smile a lot more…”
Anonymous guru

Flash-forward many more years to a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa… I was walking along a dusty road with one of my six precious daughters, who, will, of course, remain anonymous. She had just lost her precious and wonderfully-healthy 32-day old baby girl to murder at the hands of our little angel’s biological father, a psychopath, who, in their right minds, would, after all, kill their own baby with their own hands? We had done our very unpleasant duty and finished with the 2-year court case, which sentenced the boy to 30 years in prison, and we had decided to go home to Africa, to, if at all possible, heal and find some meaning and hope to go on, though none of us felt like going on, we just wanted to join our celestial lost baby girl…

My very special and very gifted and talented and much beloved young daughter, was at last at the end of her tether, as she was torn in a gazillion different pieces from her fiery trial…, sans hope, sans feeling… At that point we were in a field, suddenly, she just sat down… The field was a typical African field, I noticed, peripherally, broken glass everywhere, empty soda bottles, wrappers of all kinds, some blobs of human excrement here and there and the nauseating stench of human urine permeated the hot summer air…

I knew what was coming, devastated, I sat down with her, with a finality that alarmed my academic mind to say the least… we both just burst out in loud tears and inconsolable wailing, the great drops of our life force falling on the African soil upon which we were both born, and love so much… Luckily, the field was out of the way and no passers-by noted our rite of passage… No words were exchanged, we just emptied ourselves of the pent-up agony of our souls for the day, as it is not possible to gain total catharsis in a day, or a year or a life-time or two…, no, rather, like a volcano, you release what you can for the day, till the next eruption… incoherent phrases, like:
“Go on without me, please, Dad, just leave me here to die, I am not getting up again…”
“Never, my daughter, I will perish here with you…”
“Why Dad, why…”
“I have no idea, my daughter, none, whatsoever…”
“Am I such a great sinner Dad, that God had to take my baby away…”
“Of course not, my angel, you’re still a babe yourself…”

Continued in Part III