She's a Lady

I met her at the Crematorium where I was teaching my students about death, undertakers and cremations. I was alive and well. She was not. Encased in the unfinished pressed board of a pauper’s coffin, she lay on a trolly awaiting cremation. Her name, scrawled in felt-tipped pen on the top of the coffin, read “Christina Niemand”. And the sadness of this overwhelmed me. Because the Afrikaans second name “Niemand” when translated into English becomes “Nobody”. Here lies ‘Nobody’, about to be cremated by the state as a pauper, because nobody has claimed her.

No one deserves to be a Nobody. Everyone begins life with a father and a mother. There are connections with family and friends. And yet here is someone who has lost them. So I said a prayer for Christina Niemand. Because I know that in God’s sight she is a Somebody.