Words that Never Leave You: “I am tired. But not tired enough.”
Part Forty-Three in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
Mothers bequeath a special place in the folds of heartache. They protect everyone around them, grieve for what falls apart beyond their grasp, and yet somehow still have the innate strength to keep going in the face of war and adversity.
I will never forget a young mother, Amal – the Arabic word for Amal – who I met in the south of Iraq, sobbing over the loss of her eldest son. ISIS fighters executed Mohammad in cold blood amid the early days of their vicious onslaught. She never received his body and was not provided with answers about what exactly happened as the militiamen stormed his bus en route from Tikrit to Baghdad.
Amal wept so hard she could not breathe. And then she wiped away her tears, stretched her hands to the heavens and then looked around at her three small children playing near her feet.
“I am tired,” she whispered. “But I am not tired enough.”
When we think we cannot go on or endure anymore, we somehow do. Human beings – led by mothers – are perhaps our most buoyant. Survivors do not discard memory, they lurch themselves deep into its waters, but not deep enough that they drown.
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