In a country where disease moves as freely as a summer breeze and as unimpeded as a runaway train, it isn’t a wonder I didn’t freak out when I took a break from our training seminar today and right outside our classroom calmly stood and watched the Catholic compound’s dog spasming, frothing at the mouth in the last moments of death. Then he stopped. Dead. I literally watched him die. I went to the office to report it and was met with a casual shrug and a look like “big deal –what do you want me to do about it?”

For whatever reason, that triggered me to think about the schizophrenic lady that lives in the street around the area where I stay. I see her sleeping everywhere. I stood by her one day while she slept because I thought she too was dead. I couldn’t see her chest rise or fall because of the numerous layers of clothing mummifying her body and had to wait until her eyes flickered a little to make sure. I had never seen feet like that. Like tree roots. Obviously someone must give her food or she really would have been dead long before this, but no one is going beyond that. Here in a country where there is a mission program on every corner and even more churches I am dumbfounded as to why there is no care facility set up for the mentally ill. This morning I saw her twirling in the middle of a busy street holding the outer layer of her clothing daintily in her hands as if it was an old fashioned ball gown. She was dancing. I was choking. I asked my friend if we should try to get her out of the street and he said it would likely cause a lot of trouble and maybe an accident. I had a hard time believing that leaving her there was the right thing to do. I told him at least I had to stay and watch until I was sure she was back on the side and out of the traffic.

Sure enough she moved those gnarly bare feet as if she was wearing ballet slippers and eventually waltzed over to the side and then with no transition from the beautiful, otherworldly place of femininity she had created for herself, she let go of her coat and started to run. And that was it. A mesmerizing moment to watch and so precious it seemed meant to be cupped in one’s hands. I wondered for the rest of the day how someone’s baby girl ends up abandoned to her delusions and how, without endless therapy and meds she has found freedom in that abandonment. I have been thinking of what a profound lesson that whole scenario was for me. It was an abstract reminder that so many times we want to “help” because it is the only way we can massage our own muscled up knots of “need.” After all, she was dancing in the street and I was beside myself with fear, tension, and morale confusion while I watched.

I have been challenged today by my apparent need to gauge suffering on my self-created meter whether the victims of my pity want it or not. For example, when I was emoting compassion for the horrible last minutes of life that dog had suffered through, the comment made to me was “then wasn’t it better he died quick?” I had been fixated on the suffering and feeling very compassionate because I actually was very sad and emotional after it happened and with infuriatingly casual brilliance my friend pointed out the obvious. Here I was distraught over the impending doom I felt was one car away from pancaking that poor mentally ill girl in the street while my continuingly wise comrade knew my “worry” was what could possibly be what got her killed.

Although I realize I will never be finished aiming to ‘get it right,’ ‘figure it out’ or ‘know what to do’ in situations demanding compassion, I am sure I will never stop trying. The life lessons are whip stinging hard in Haiti sometimes. Here I witness things I cannot witness at home in Canada. Things that poke your eyes and hurt your heart. I don’t know what to do with a lot of it. It is hard to accept that some things are better left alone and not try to warp it my way so I can “feel” better.

Difficult to let the dogs die and the dainties dance.