Our Lucy

At just 19, Lucy was remarkable. She had a rare kind of gentle, unexpected humour ... the kind of humour that could knock you completely off guard, while simultaneously putting you totally at ease. She had an incredibly endearing manner - she was always inquisitive, she was always hopeful and, in the face of great suffering, she was always smiling. Lucy was beautiful. Years of untreated diabetes meant that Lucy was also blind, emaciated, and in the last stages of organ failure.

Lucy lived with her mother in a one roomed house in Hoima. Fr Godfrey and I first came to know Lucy in January last year after her mum requested that a priest visit them to bring Holy Communion for Lucy. Since that time, Lucy, Godfrey and I had grown closer together than any of us had perhaps realised. Lucy's manner was such that you couldn't help but love her and, maybe ironically, discover life through her.

After a long, at times lonely, at times painful struggle, Lucy died on Tuesday this week. KISS had come to know Lucy too late to be able to help her medical situation. Painful as it was to accept, there was nothing we could do to give Lucy a second chance at the life she so longed to live. Outwardly she always held on to the hope that she would see again and walk again. Inwardly, I think she knew what was happening.

Witnessing Lucy's situation was intensely painful. Her beauty made it all the more difficult to accept that a person could be condemned, so unnecessarily, to such isolation and helplessness. Had Lucy had access to treatment for her diabetes early on, there would have been every chance of her living a relatively comfortable life. I have seen poverty destroy so much during my time in Uganda. But it has never angered me so much as when it finally destroyed our Lucy.

When doctors told us that there was nothing more we could do for Lucy, I felt physically sick. But we held on to the belief that that wasn't quite true. There WAS something we could do - we could still be with Lucy - we could still love Lucy, we could still laugh with Lucy and we could still cry with Lucy. And, at the end, that was perhaps more life giving than any medical treatment ever would have been.

Towards the end of her life, Lucy made several requests of us. Fr Godfrey never passed up the opportunity to fulfil those requests. Each time Lucy asked for something, and each time Fr Godfrey fulfilled the request, the two were ridiculed. Fr Godfrey's acts of selfless love for Lucy were denounced as foolish - a waste of time and a waste of money. Why buy perfume for a person who is never going to leave their bed again? Why buy a radio for someone who is running out of days to listen to it? The questions went on. But so too did Godfrey's unshakable belief that Lucy was worth something. Lucy's final request to us, a week before she died, was that we bring her a rosary. At Lucy's funeral this week, Fr Godfrey brought that rosary (one which was particularly dear to him and which he had made up his mind to give to Lucy before she died) and, through painfully human tears, handed it over to Lucy's fragile mother as she wept by Lucy's coffin.

Love really does never give up. I've read it so many times. But it took Fr Godfrey's defiant acts of giving, and Lucy's persistent acts of faith, for my eyes to really be opened to the beauty of what that means.

Loosing Lucy has been horrendously painful - but knowing Lucy was the most incredible blessing. In sharing Lucy's story, it is the blessing, not the pain, that I most want to share with you. Lucy taught us more about what KISS is than we could ever have written of our own accord. KISS is exactly what Fr Godfrey has done - it is not a solution or an end to poverty or suffering - it is a constant fight simply to love in the face of adversity. Lucy has set us an immense challenge. I hope and pray that, in time, we are able to live up to it.