A Requiem for Noemi
It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to read at breakfast on Easter morning, but there it was on the front page of the New York Times–the story of 12 year old Noemi, a slight Ecuadorian child who had committed suicide earlier this year in Mexico.
He is risen! He is risen indeed! The cries would soon ring through our church.
I read through the fragments of her life, her solemn eyes pulling me deeper and deeper into her story. Weary eyes, doubtless from endless days huddled in a dusty pick-up truck bound for Freedom Land and reunion with her parents. Her parents, the story explained, had left Ecuador for a better life in the Bronx, NY, when she was about three years old. Since then Noemi had continued to live in Ecuador with her grandparents. She had not wanted to leave Ecuador. It was all she knew, and poor as they were, her grandparents had nurtured her lovingly. But when her parents called to proudly tell her they had arranged for her to join them in America, she packed up her suitcase and soon found herself in the back of that gritty pick-up truck, bumping over roads that stretched endlessly to a future frighteningly unknown, with questions, fears, and doubts as her closest companions.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
After about a month of the dust and heat of country after country, the truck was stopped in Mexico, the driver arrested, Noemi sent to a shelter for children, a place called the House of Hope. It seems, however, that there was no hope for Noemi. Her heart was sealed in a dark tomb of fear, despair, and loneliness, and the stone that covered the entrance was simply far too heavy for her to move. So one day she walked her lonely 12-year old self into an empty House of Hope bathroom and quietly hung herself from a shower curtain rod.
He is risen. He is risen indeed!
I share Noemi’s story, not in any way to dampen our Easter joy. Easter is indeed God’s good news! Let the Hosannas ring! Let the Alleluias resound! I share Noemi’s story simply to remind myself and all of us that there are still more stones in the world that need to be rolled away. To remind us that Easter is an unfinished story.
from the slow lane 