Evanys Mukamugema

A few weeks ago, a close friend of our family died, and it’s been bouncing around my head ever since. I feel like I need to write about this because the circumstances behind her death are both mysterious and unimaginably sad.

Evanys survived the genocide in Rwanda. The simple knowledge that the woman I knew had experienced that kind of horror, had the strength to fight through it and move on to a better place, kept me in awe of her whenever we met. I never asked about her experience – it came up once during conversation and I saw a look on her face I’d never seen before. A hard look – set jaw, eyes dark, her body language stiff. I never pressed her for information because I understood that Hell is not a place to revisit if you managed to escape. She just shook her head and said, “Another time, maybe.” She was still learning English, but the raw emotion packed into those words communicated the message clearly to me. “This is not something I am capable of talking about right now. Maybe never.”

Now that she is gone, I will never know the extent of her experience, but I am grateful for the time spent with her.

She met my mother after coming to Manchester, NH as a student – part of the UNHCR resettlement program. My mother was an administrator at UNH – and when they met they just hit it off. They were friends for years. Best friends. She became part of our family and was present at all the usual holidays.

I saw Evanys this last Thanksgiving.

I’d brought a couple of bottles of wine with me from Washington and quickly realized that the only folks who’d be drinking them would be me, my sister, and her fiancé. But then Evanys smiled a little shy smile and said, “I’ll have a little.” The emphasis was on the last syllable of the last word. She spoke this way often, and I wondered if her native language had that sort of rhythm, similar in theory in the way to speak Japanese. Ni-ppon-GO.

I beamed and filled her glass with a smidgeon. I stopped, but she nodded and motioned for me to pour more. She had two glasses that night, and talked often and with so much energy. She told us about her classes, her plans for making and selling clothes - she thought the quality of workmanship of most domestic manufacturers was poor. She loved cloth and pattern and the cut of clothing – she was a talented seamstress.

Her laugh could fill the room and set table settings jingling across the tablecloth.

This would be the last time I spoke with her. The last time I saw her.

I still feel dread when I recall my mother’s description of Evanys’ last day. This is how she died:

My mother had gone to pick Evanys up at her apartment, having made plans the previous day. Evanys had been sick for quite a long time, and my mother had continued to check up on her, bringing her food, driving her places if needed. Evanys had lost her temporary job at the Soup Kitchen where she’d been working and my mother was negotiating with UNH to try to find some way to get her some money to live on – work study - something. It’s my guess that Evanys had not been eating well. Probably had not been eating much at all.

My mother drove up in front of the apartment and waited for a bit. She called up to Evanys’ apartment and got a fast busy signal. Very strange. As she sat there, a couple of police cars sped up and troopers spilled out, rushing into the building. An ambulance arrived not long after. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes – my mother too scared to enter the building – this was not in a friendly part of the city, and there was no knowing what was going on inside. And then the EMTs came downstairs with a body on a stretcher, face covered, and my mother knew. She jumped out of her car and ran to them. “Do you know her?” “Yes.” “Please stay here and speak to the police. They’ll want to ask you some questions.”

They’d tried to resuscitate her without success.

My mother found out from the police that Evanys had dialed 911 perhaps thirty minutes before and said the following words, gasping: “Help me, I’m dying…” And then the phone went dead.

They’d traced the call, and come as quickly as they could.

I can’t get her last words out of my head. They’re so simple and direct and to the point. And they’re the last words she said – frightened and alone. And I feel horror in that.

We still don’t know the cause of death. Blood work was sent to a lab a few weeks ago, and we’ve heard nothing. I’m haunted by a phrase that keeps popping into my head: She died because she was poor. I don’t want to believe this is true. But I fear it is. She survived genocide but died from illness. From some unknown thing.

I will miss her. I will miss all the conversations we will never have. I’ll miss her smile and her belly laugh, and the mischievous look she’d sometimes get when talking about her plans for the future. When she talked about life.

I wish I could speak to her one last time but the words that come to mind are sentimental and trite and I fight back tears. So I’ll do this instead: Next time I’m in NH, I’ll visit her grave and stand on the grass, or kneel down and touch the earth, and feel the sun, or wind, or rain on my face, and I’ll let her know, in words or thoughts or feelings, that I’m there - and that she’s not alone.