Jeune, in French, means “young,” so it suits you. She had a friend named Herzulia, and they would take walks together and laugh about men and eventually your mother got involved with a man of her own, an older man with sad eyes whose first name was Fedner and whose last name was Jeune, which is your last name, too. Your mother, Resilia, from what I have been told, was a tall, strong woman with a broad face and a stern expression, like you have sometimes when you do not get your way. There were people who loved you before we loved you. But I think you meant it the way you said it, because life before the orphanage was foggy in your memory, like being in a misty forest, so “How did you find me?” makes sense, because to you, I suppose, it felt as if you were found.īut you were never lost, Chika. “How did we find you?” And you said, “Yes.” And we said, “You mean how did you come to us?” and you said yes, again. Once, late at night, Miss Janine and I were crouched next to your bed and you said to us, quietly, “How did you find me?” I thought it was such a sad question that I could only repeat it. Although you lived in America and died in America, you were always of another place, as you are now, even as you sit here with me. So you were birthed into the soil of your homeland, Chika, all its roiling rage and beauty, and maybe that is why you sometimes roiled and raged yourself, and were so beautiful.
You slept that night in the sugarcane fields, on a bed of leaves, under the stars, and you slept there for many days that followed. All around, people were running and falling and praying and crying. Your home was destroyed, but you were both left intact - naked to the sky, but intact. Perhaps God got a good look at you, Chika, because He didn’t take you that day, and He didn’t take your mother, even though He took so many others. Your cinder block house wobbled and the roof fell off and the structure split open like a walnut, leaving the two of you exposed to the heavens. 12, a hot afternoon, you were sleeping on your mother’s chest when the world shook as if the dirt held thunder. You were happy there in that way once, even very poor.Ĭhika is baptized in 2010 as Haiti is recovering from its worst earthquake in 168 years.Īnd on your third day of life, Jan. A place of beauty and laughter and unshakable faith, and children - children who, in a rainstorm, will hook arms and dance spontaneously, then throw themselves to the ground in hysterics, as if they don’t know what to do with all their joy. Haiti, your homeland, is the second poorest nation in the world, with a history of hardship and many deaths, the kind that come too soon.īut it is also a place of great happiness, Chika. It was a tragedy on an island where tragedy is no stranger. That’s more people killed in less than a minute than in all the days of the American Revolution and the Gulf War combined. They never did get an accurate count of those lost, not to this day, but it was in the hundreds of thousands.
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People died and were buried in the rubble, many of them not found until weeks later, their skin covered in gray dust. Houses that held families were intact one moment and puffs of smoke the next. I arrived in Haiti a few weeks later, to help after a terrible earthquake, and since you tell me I should talk like a grown-up, then I can say it was seismic enough in 30 seconds to wipe out nearly 3% of your country’s population. I wasn’t there the day you were born, Chika. It’s all we really want, my wife and I, since Chika has been gone to be in the same place with her, all the time.Īll right, I say. It feels like forever.Īll right, Chika, I say. Can it really be a year since she’s gone? It feels like yesterday. You can get used to everything in life, I suppose. I say, “Good morning, beautiful girl,” and she says, “Good morning, Mister Mitch,” and she sits on the floor or in her little chair, which I never removed from my office. I spoke quickly, believing this was a dream and she would vanish at any moment. I said her name in disbelief - “Chika?” - and she turned, so I knew she could hear me. And suddenly, there she was, standing beside me. She first appeared eight months after she died, the morning of my father’s funeral. She taps her little fingers on the desk, as if she has to think about it.Ĭhika never stays for long. Chika, 5, and Mitch Albom during their daily morning and evening teeth brushing routine at the Alboms' home in July 2015.
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