Her Story

I have written before about all these girls have been through, and how much it breaks our hearts. Their precious family was torn apart by AIDS, a disease they cannot understand.

 

Their father passed away in September of 2007, just two weeks before Ella Furtuna was born. Their mother also has AIDS and her failing health kept her from being able to work to feed her family.

 

While Ella is too young to have seen or remember the ravaging effects of AIDS, or death, or poverty, Lila Selam is not. All these things are very real for her, fresh and painful in her memory and her heart. And both girls have experienced the pain of relinquishment, of being torn apart from their family and placed into an orphanage. Both are in the process of relearning to trust and love a family from the other side of the world.

 

Today as I did Lila’s hair for church she began talking. It was repetitive and slow as she struggled to put the concepts together in English. But what came out of her mouth amazed me. She was able to formulate these memories into English, to share them with me with an open heart, to see the progression of where she was before to where she is now, and to end the story with a sense of hope about her. It is hard to explain what it does to my heart.

 

So here is a pretty close rendition of her words to me this morning.

 

Ella and me dad and mom in Ethiopia. Ethiopia Dad go to sleep, no wake up, no wake up. I don’t know. Dad hurt (points to throat), Dad hurt leg, dad go to sleep, sleep. No wake up, no wake up.

 

Everybody, mom and everybody come house, cry, cry, cry. Dad sleep and no wake up, no wake up. Everybody come, aunts come, everybody come cry, cry, cry.

 

Dad sleep, no wake up. Car come, dad go in car. Mom and dad go in car. Dad, I don’t know where go. Dad (points down). (Signifying burial, I think.)

 

Mom and me and Ella house. No money. Little money gone. Gone. No money. No food. Me and Ella go friend eat. No eat at home. Eat with friend.  

 

Ella and me go America.

 

She finished and I thanked her for talking to me. We hugged, she smiled and then we ate breakfast. She usually spends a few minutes at every meal, every car ride, really every time we aren’t busy, busy with other things to tell all of us that she loves us. She goes down the list, “Me love Dad, me love Mom, me love John, me love Will, me love Grace, me love Ella.” Then she ends with a triumphant “Me love everybody in this family!”

 

And then each of us say, “I love you too, Lila.” And we do.