Tragedy has a way of visiting those who can bear it least. Catastrophe has a propensity to strike without warning. Unimagined carnage can fall upon anyone at any time in any place at any moment. And so it was in Port-au-Prince. There was no ominous thundercloud, no wailing siren, no public announcement, no forewarning. There was nothing. One minute the ground was still and the next the ground was rolling and cracking and something terrible had begun. One second people were living their lives and in the next they were running for their lives. In the flash of an eye everything changed. Everything.
For thirty-eight seconds the largest city in the poorest nation of the western hemisphere was in the grip of a violent monster rumbling below the surface of the earth, generating a crushing cascade of death and destruction and devastation. Every man, every woman, every child was caught in the monster’s grasp as it terrorized Haiti and shook its capital ferociously. Twenty-one year old Evans Brice was sitting at his workstation when suddenly his desk started jumping violently and the walls were swaying and the roof was falling and the floor opened, swallowing people and furniture and its own contents and there was dust and smoke and fire and screams and everything was shaking and splitting and crashing and breaking and plummeting. Evans tumbled with debris through the open floor, enveloped in a cloud of disintegrating powder and toxic dust bursting with loose objects of twisted metal, shattered bricks, and splintered wood. Falling, he could only think of his fiancée Fiona Jean – his first love – the girl who had captured his heart when he was sixteen, the girl who still captured his heart five years later as he stared death in the face.
The universal longing and yearning for love is found everywhere throughout our world. Feelings of love are felt as strongly in the third world as they are in the first world. People are people and hearts are hearts. Every heart in every person in every nation aches for love and desires to give love and thirsts to be loved. Love is the one force that connects hearts and it’s the only force that completes hearts. No force, no emotion, no possession can silence the ache of the heart, fulfill the longing of the heart, quench the thirst of the heart except for love. Love is an ineffable wonder coveted in every corridor and chamber of the human heart, creating a vacuum of want and need and craving – a void that can only be filled through the amazing happening of experiencing love.
Every person, everywhere, longs to take a breathtaking journey with someone and encounter the agony and ecstasy of pioneers who discover the miraculous happening of love, creating a path of two lives becoming one, of two hearts uniting. This is what makes love so captivating and entrancing, a force so powerful and exhilarating, a force every human heart desires. Love is the only force in the universe that can change hearts, change lives, change existence; it’s the only force that can survive the unimaginable and the impossible and the inconceivable and the unthinkable. Love cannot be silenced, eradicated, destroyed, exterminated. No tragedy or wound, no calamity or disaster can eliminate or do away with love, for love is a force that never dies. Love is eternal.
And so it was for Evans as he lay trapped in rubble, buried in debris, entombed in the worst disaster in Haiti’s history. He was miraculously wedged in a cavity the size of his body, surrounded by voices of despair and anguish. Slipping in and out of consciousness, he could think only of love. Of love and love alone.
The love he felt.
The love he experienced.
He could think only of love.
The love of his life.
The love that completed him.
He could think only of love.
Just love.
Love alone.
Love.
Fiona.
Love was alive in the rubble.
A day after the most devastating earthquake in recorded history struck the West Indies, Evans is freed from the rubble. For a moment there is light and a little hope as faith unfurls in his heart. Then panic returns. Fiona. Minutes after being rescued, he hits the seemingly stable ground and runs toward the textile factory where Fiona works in the blue collar neighborhood of Carrefour, in Port-au-Prince.
His lungs burn.
His head pounds.
His heart hurts.
He runs and runs and runs.
He has to find her.
Just has to find her.
He does not care how or where.
He runs and runs.
He just wants to find her.
Just wants to find her.
Wants to find her.
Just her.
Her.
Fiona.
Everywhere he looks streets are covered with collapsed buildings as multi-story structures have turned into something resembling short stacks of pancakes. Screams are coming from buckled edifices, people begging and pleading to be saved. Some are crying for God. Some are crying for others. Some are just crying. Crying parents are looking for children. Crying children are looking for parents. Everywhere, on every street, in every building, in every pile of rubble someone is crying and someone is looking for someone. As Evans rambles through the streets, devastation looms in the shadows and sunshine alike as a ubiquitous tormentor of Haiti’s men, women, and children. Images of mass destruction are seen in every direction: dangling power lines, riots of electric wires, shards of broken glass, ruptured pipes, fractured streets, and mountains and mountains of rubble. Nearly 290,000 buildings are destroyed or damaged. Over 220,000 are dead and 300,000 more are injured. It’s like running through an apocalypse as scenes of devastation are encountered every second: detached limbs lying in streets, one man is seen shrieking in pain; he lost both legs, another is screaming in agony; he discovered his wife crushed in rubble. Everywhere there are bodies and people are stumbling and staggering in a shock-induced stupor, some covered in dirt and dust and dried blood, some in ripped and torn clothing, some barefoot, some naked. The city’s life is beaten back in clusters of cowering refugees, like the results of some inexplicable experiment gone badly wrong. Evans is a mile away when he passes an area strewn with backpacks, textbooks and loose papers fluttering in the breeze. It was once a school. He ignores the smell in the air, the cries in the streets, the horrors all around. He keeps running and running.
Each second is an hour long.
Each step a long distance race.
He runs and runs and runs.
He must get there.
He must.
There.
Fiona.
The mist starts to form. A distant fog rises from someplace he does not know and begins to envelop his heart. He grows fearful as it approaches. Like a rolling cloud it blankets everything. His throat begins to close and his eyes well up with tears. Hope fades into desolation, into loneliness and despair, into pain so deep, so so deep. His head turns side to side in a universal gesture of negation as he stands silently among the ruins. Dense tears slip down his cheeks as he stares in disbelief at the mangled corpse of a beautiful woman half crushed beneath the concrete. It’s the love of his life. It’s Fiona. Grief manifests itself as he sinks to his knees and desperately rubs his wallet filled with her pictures against his heart. A profound sense of loss inhabits and overwhelms him as sorrow and pain and deep heartache pour out in heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and stammering broken words, “I cannot leave. I cannot leave. We’ve been together since we were sixteen. I cannot leave. I love her. I love her so much.” His trembling hand reaches out and touches her hair, powdered white with concrete dust. Slowly he moves closer and gently cradles her head in his arms. He tenderly brushes the white dust from her hair. His tears fall softly on her face as he whispers in her ear, “I will not leave you like this. I will not leave you, Fiona. I will not leave.” He closes his eyes and prays she can hear his words. Somehow, somewhere, he wants her to hear his words. He wants her to know she is safe in his arms, that she is safe, she is safe safe safe.
Safe in his arms.
In his arms.
Safe.
For he will not leave.
He will not leave.
Will not leave.
Love does not leave.
Does not leave.
Love stands in the rubble.
In the rubble.
Love stands.
Sometimes you see the most beautiful expression of love in the most painful picture of human loss and suffering. And it’s in this moment you really understand love. Love cannot be explained. No words can ever convey the magnificence and splendor and depth of love. Love can only be seen with the eye and felt in the heart.
In a traumatized world where everything had been turned upside down and the ground itself had given way, love offered certitude as Evans stayed with Fiona until her body could be safely removed. Love could be seen and felt as he held her for three days. He waited so he could give her a proper burial, a peaceful place where she could be laid to rest. People may die. But love does not. Love stands in the rubble and cares for the wellbeing of another. Love does not run, or cower, or abandon. Love waits for the best interests of another to be fulfilled and realized. Evans would not leave because the love for Fiona was greater than the pain of her death. Love endures all things. He stayed with her until she could be freed from the debris. His girl, his love, would be buried in dignity. Not in a large grave with others. Not scooped up. Not abandoned and buried in rubble. No, this was his other half, his heart’s companion. This was the love of his life, the girl who captured his heart at sixteen, the girl who still captured his heart in death. And love – true and authentic love – does not leave.
We don’t know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until something beautiful has ended. Love means you care for another person’s interests and their happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be. No matter where you are today, love can work in your rubble if you really take a moment to see life for what it is and understand what truly completes you. May you hold those in your life close to your body and feel them breathe and take in their remarkable scent and give them your love – give them your love while you still have them. Life is short, very, very short. If you take a moment, a humble and sincere moment, and look through the lens of love at your life and your world, you will see the depth of love and feel the wonder of love; you will understand why love never leaves and always remains; you will discover how love endures all things and stands in the rubble.
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