(I'm sorry to break this up like this, but I am writing during breaks and cannot post it all at once)

E was one of several children born to a poor family in El Salvador. She didn't think they were poor. They were the same as everyone else. And they were loved. She lived with her Mother and Father, her Aunt and Uncle, her brothers and sisters and all of the cousins as was their custom. She remembered that times were bad. The men of families would often disappear and the women would often cry. She remembered her Father and Uncle leaving with the promise that they would make a future for all of them in America. They would send for them. So her Mother and her Aunt took on the daily task of caring for the families, and waited to hear from the husbands. E was about 8 years old at this time.

One day the "bad people" came for the fathers. When they realized the fathers weren't there, they took the 2 oldest sons representing the 2 families. They were 9 and 13. That is how old my babies are today. 9 and 13. The boys were brave, she'd remember, but the mothers were not. They wept and were inconsolable. They prayed and prayed. E didn't really understand. She just missed them as she did her Father and Uncle. She prayed for their return. Early one morning she awoke to a noise outside and believed it was the return of her brother and cousin. She ran out to the front porch. She'd recall that it took a while to understand what she saw. It was the severed heads of the young boys, thrown onto the porch like bags of trash. (9 and 13 --- home to heaven. 8 and all grown up.)

I remember weeping when E told me her memory--this small part of her long story. (Rachel weeping for her children Matt 2:18) I still weep today. She consoled me. Imagine that.

Her mother became brave after that. She and the Aunt gathered their children and walked with them to the "bad people" where she demanded the bodies of her son and nephew to be returned to them so they could give them a proper burial. E remembered her mother's head held proudly and her voice authoritative. The bad people shrugged and directed her to a place where she could "go find them". She and all her children held closely around her went to a place that engraved itself in E's memory---Piles of headless, nameless bodies to the left and to the right---Some grown men, some boys of all sizes. They found their boys, and carried them home sometimes weeping sometimes silent --- a funeral procession led by E's mother who in her grief somehow managed to hold her head up and keep walking.