September 2, 2009

This is Wednesday, just under 10 minutes before midnight. It has been a hectic day, just like Monday and Tuesday.

The difference is that I was on the road today. We travelled from Berlin to Bonn for some eight hours, including two 30 minute stops because by law a driver of any big car in Germany, must rest after three hours.

Straight in Bonn, there was no time to rest. We went into a visit of DW Radio. It is housed in a beautiful building adjacent to the UN office here.

Now I am in Koeln, some 20 kilometres from Bonn. I had 10 minutes between programmes. Tired, I opened my mailbox. And my love had written under the subject "Time for Prayer". This is an e-mail in which we share prayer items for everyday when we are away from each other.

She had bad news. Her cousin, Jennifer, has passed on in the UK. I should rather say our cousin because her relations are my relations first.

I called her up just before we left for dinner at the invitation of DW Academy (Africa Section). I called her up again after the dinner at about 10 pm. We had a wonderful chat of about 15 minutes. I told her that death is a coward. It takes those we love, thinking we shall not live without them.

But the weakness of death is that it teaches us to live without, to live without those we love. Death teaches us to love more, to take the place of those gone. This is my duty: to love my love the way her cousin would have loved her. It is my duty to fill the spaces left by those she grew up to see, especially because the cousin was my age.

I mourn with my love. Yet I admire my love's faith in the Lord. She told me the bad news in a rather familiar e-mail subject (Time for Prayer). She brought the strange through the familiar. She announced a thing that weakens our faith through an e-mail subject that strengthens our (my love and I) faith.

Such is joy brought by a wonderful lady into a man's life.