Dear Philip 23rd January 2019
It is strange to think that 20 years has passed since that January night. Strange as well to think, that had it never happened, you would now be thirty and Timothy twenty-six years old.
We woke up the day after your death to another day at Kovalam Beach where we were on holiday. And there it was on the front page of The Hindu newspaper, a grainy photo of a burnt out vehicle and words that blurred on the page, disconnected and nonsensical.
You never saw 9/11. If you had, I guess, you would have been about twelve years old. Airplanes crashing into towers, dust, rubble, destruction and burning; the air heavy with ash and death.
Everyone who remembers the events of 9/11 can also remember what they were doing the moment they heard.
The morning after your death was like that; separate to normal reality, brazen, burnt into the memory and never forgotten. And unspoken on many lips was not the fact of your demise, but the manner of it.
And that morning, at Kovalam Beach; the waves still crashed on the beach, the Sunglass Man was still out, a lassi was still sweet, lime sodas were still for sale, the fishermen still dragged their boats up the beach, like any other day.
Back at school, a few weeks later, your memorial service was held outside on the basketball court. The sky was incongruously blue and the sun bright. The silvered eucalyptus leaves glittered overhead dancing in the breeze. In February (at the time your memorial took place), a few months before the monsoon’s arrival, the sun shone unrelentingly with no let up for a mourner who longed for a sullen sky and a cold wind.
We sang “It is well with my soul”, rather badly I thought, voices thin and insubstantial with no roof overhead to catch any sound. We remembered you writing with too much premonition for a 10 year old that you “wanted to live to give God glory” in your school handbook. We remembered your Dad standing at the back of the Assembly Hall bellowing out hymns so half the school turned around to see who was singing.
Two other Standard 13 students and I read an account of the life of Horatio Spafford, the writer of the hymn “It is well with my soul”. We had no microphones and so our voices it seemed, hung in the air around us as if we were only talking to ourselves. Horatio’s family was almost entirely swept away with only the exception of a baby daughter. My preoccupied mind did not really join the dots in what I was reading and how it related to recent events. Horatio’s overwhelming loss was (and is) the loss experienced by your Mum and your sister Esther. Your family’s loss was (and is) our loss to share. Horatio’s reaction was (and is) your Mum and Esther’s reaction and could be ours. But I confess, at the time, this significance was lost on me. All I felt was empty shock. But this sense of shock was shared, it seemed to me, as so few shed tears at that service. You had been taken with such force and violence; we were dry eyed and silent. Seated on the back row with the other girls in Standard 13, I listened to Mark Ronalds, your Standard 6 teacher deliver a moving tribute. His honest reflection and the holding back of his tears brought tears to my eyes.
And then I had an A level physics class and school ground back into motion like an old machine stiff with a nine week holiday behind it.
We had a Sports Day that year (not a swimming gala) and your sister Esther won javelin (I think) for her age division. At the point that her name was called to come and collect her tiny trophy cup and certificate, the cheers were deafening. She had won the Olympic Gold for us, an Olympic Gold in bearing up under suffering.
And so much has happened in 20 years. We are all grown up now. And you would be too, if none of it had happened. Esther and your Mum are back in Australia. Esther is married with four children, with a son – your nephew – who looks exactly as you did.
I visited Hebron in 2009, and found that the newly renovated Assembly Hall was named the “Staines Memorial Hall”. On the plaque outside reads this verse from John’s gospel. ”Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24, NIV)
Orissa is a place of a rapidly growing church. Those many seeds are green shoots. And Orissa is still a place of the intensely persecuted. The air still hangs heavy with suffering for Christians; where you lived and eventually died. Thousands are displaced, Christians killed, church buildings destroyed. The world is not worthy of them.
The world was not worthy of you or Timothy or your Dad either. And although the adult Philip and Timothy or the seventy-eight year missionary statesman Graham are not a real presence for us earth side; it is gloriously real heaven side.
It is well with our souls.
And it will be well with our souls.
