The death of a child is an abomination

When, aged thirteen, my best friend died of complications from sickle cell disease, her parents could not attend her funeral, or find out where she was buried. My mom explained to me that in the Yoruba culture, because parents are not expected to survive their children, it is considered an abomination for a parent to know where their child is buried. So, the young adults in the extended family attended the burial, and the older people stayed at home with the parents to console them. My grieving eleven-year-old mind interpreted the custom to mean “the death of a child is an abomination.” That thought resounded in my mind as I mourned my friend. It echoed when I was thirteen, and a classmate died in a car accident on the newly commissioned Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos; and again when at fifteen, I lost another friend to cerebral malaria. At seventeen years old, in my first year of university, one morning, a friend was found dead in his hostel bed without apparent cause. The only revelation at autopsy were the fragments of his last meal seen lodged within his airway. His parents were poor and lived far away from their extended family, so it fell to us his friends to be at his burial. At the funeral, as clods of earth fell on his coffin, the thought came to me again: The death of a child is an abomination. The thought stayed with me throughout my time in medical school and internship in Lagos where we lost several children to illnesses even as we worked hard to save...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Hospital Intensive care Pediatrics Source Type: blogs