Mrs. Usha Jesudasan
I must have been seven years old. My younger brothers were quarreling with each other and both seemed adamant about whatever they were fighting about. My grandmother called us all together. Holding my brothers one in each arm, she told us the story of the two silly goats. Two goats stood in the middle of a bridge. Far below were rocks and a river. Both wanted to cross a bridge at the same time. Neither were prepared to let the other go first — they didn’t know how to. If they both went together they would surely fall on the rocks and die. At last, one goat sat down and allowed the other to cross over his back and go safely to the other side. This way he too was able to get across the bridge. My brother and I have never forgotten this story told to us over sixty years ago. Over the years one of us would remind the other of this story at a time when we needed to hear it’s message again. Such is the power of a story and the storyteller.
Over twenty five years ago, my husband Dr Kumar Jesudasan was diagnosed with severe liver failure. He was a young man in the prime of his life. As his health deteriorated he was in and out of hospital many times. During these times, Kumar went through such despairing times at having to live with so much pain. All his dignity as a human being was slowly eroded by needles in his arms, a tasteless diet, a pathetic hospital gown and so much more. He fought against this indignity as fiercely as he could. All he wanted to do was to die with dignity with his family beside him , at home surrounded by love, not interns, nurses, and doctors he didn’t know . His faith in a loving God once so strong now waned. He fought with God and sometimes with me. There were no answers to his questions ‘Why? What have I done wrong? Why Must I suffer? What kind of a God would allow so much suffering?’
There were questions to his doctors too — many questions about his disease that he wanted answers to. But of course there were no answers. From childhood, I had the habit of keeping a diary of events and conversations. When Kumar was asleep, I wrote down all that was happening to him to me and our little children. A few months after he passed away, I picked up my notes which were mostly about his experiences of being a patient and a doctor seeing his body deteriorate. I had also included a few pages on what we did for him at this time and how we coped as a family. I typed these notes and shared them with Dr. Anand Zachariah, his doctor at Christian Medical College and Hospital Vellore. Over the next few months a few people whom I did not know called me up and said how much this ‘ typed’ piece helped them when their husbands/ wives were ill. One day, I was in Bangalore when a friend of my cousin visited knowing that I was there. She recounted reading this article just a few weeks ago when her husband too was facing these questions and terminal sickness. ‘ You should write it as a book,’ she said. ‘ Your story will bring strength and healing to many.’ A warm tingling flooded me.
Until that evening, I didn’t realize I had a story to tell. Now that I knew I had one, who was I going to tell it to? And how? The Hand of God led me to write down our experiences in a book called I Will Lie Down In Peace.
The process of writing was an experience I did not expect. I sat at our dining table every morning after the children had gone to school. Sheets of yellow paper, a bottle of black ink and my fountain pen were in front of me. I wrote everything I could remember about that time and of our lives together from the time we met. People say that writing is a healing and therapeutic activity. Quite often I would weep and wonder if it was too soon to write anything. Writing a paragraph would exhaust me. Many of my memories were so fresh and we had had such a beautiful life together. I steeled myself to keep writing. Then, it happened. The flow of the narrative just took over and I wrote and wrote.
I Will Lie Down In Peace is a book that has gone from hand to hand, from family to family. Hand written letters came from all over the world. ‘I bought this book at the airport bookshop in Delhi. I cried all the way to London. I wish I had read this when my mother was dying.’ said Alex Salmond.’ Dr. Ratna from Bangalore, ‘I was able to let go of my precious son, during his last days, with peace between him, me and God, after reading your book.’
Several months after the book was launched, I wrote an article that summarized our idea of healing for Contact, a health magazine of the World Council of Churches. Some months later, I received a letter from a young lady in Kisimu, Kenya. Margaret Auma ran a programme for women whose husbands and sons were suffering from AIDS. This was a time when AIDS was ravaging Africa. She shared parts of the book, the unanswered questions and the idea of what is healing when we are not magically cured, with a women’s group who were tending their sick husbands.
The narrative of healing does not happen in a vacuum. It requires sick , broken, dying people/ families. It wrenches ‘our story’ out of us and if we are willing to share it, someone somewhere catches it and finds healing and peace through it.
Years passed, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the same time my beloved mother was dying of the same disease. I did the only thing I knew. I wrote her story and mine in a book called Two Journeys. For her it was the end, for me it was another beginning. Once again, the book went from hand to hand, family to family bringing healing and peace.
Almost thirty years ago, we lived in Singapore for a few years working with The Leprosy Mission International. At a Bible study hosted by one of my friends, I met the amazing Elisabeth Elliot. She quietly narrated the story of her first husband Jim Elliot, the young missionary to the Aucas in South America, who was shot dead by an arrow. I had read all of Elisabeth Elliot’s books. Finding myself alone with her we talked about things that were important to us. I cringe now when I think of how insensitively I asked her, ‘Don’t you get tired telling the same story again and again?” I think in the tapestry of life, it was a question I was meant to ask — and for her to reply me in the way she did. Elisabeth Elliot, the great missionary leader and writer held my hands in hers, looked straight into my eyes and said very clearly, “Usha, one day God will give you a story to tell, and that will be the story you will tell again and again for the rest of your life.’
(As a Consultant for the World Council of Churches on issues of peace and reconciliation, Mrs. Usha Jesudasan has traveled to places wherever there has been this need and documented it extensively. Usha is also actively shaping the next generation through the unique text book on Peace and Values education — Living in Harmony — which introduces children to the idea of non — violence and values which sustain family and community living.)
