When does dead mean dead?

Yesterday the sound of wailing was added to the sound of my watch’s alarm going off in the early twilight of morning.
It wasn’t such a surprise, this sign of a funeral, because our neighbor kid—Monday—has been sick for a while. In fact, you might remember her as the girl who in November “died” and was “resurrected.” (That would make this funeral number two.) She also lived on the same compound as Tito, the little boy we lost not a month ago, and next door to Ichol, who died on Christmas Eve. Kim and I have been watching her, and even got her mom to take her to the clinic, but it seems they didn’t do much for her either.
I slunk out of bed, tossed a mu-mu over my pajamas and climbed up the path to her mom’s compound.
My fear was confirmed on the way there by a simple exchange with Laudina.
“Who?”
“Monday. Monday is dead.”
So I went and sat with the other women as they cried (“Oye hito! Oye hito!”/“A child has died! A child has died!”) and thought more about life and ministry here, as the twilight turned into dawn, and then I came back home.
The day didn’t get much better from there, as I was puking most of the morning and sleeping much of the day, but it took a curious turn that afternoon, when Mary came for tea.
We asked her if she’d been to the house of the funeral. She said yes, Monday had died, and now they had taken her to Sohot. Her heart is still beating, like this (and she pulsed her hand, from fist to splayed fingers).
She died, but her heart is still beating?
Yes.
But she died. Last night, she died.
Yes.
But her heart is still beating, like this?
Yes. She died, but her heart is still beating.
They’ve taken her where?
To the witchdoctor, in Sohot.
Got it.
Again, a concept of Lopit thought that finds no place in the organization and thinking of my Western mind. And what, then, of our Gospel message? What does it mean for Jesus to die? Was he dead, as in DEAD dead—what I think of as dead—or was he dead like Monday was dead (this time, or last time)? And what does it mean for him to be raised from the dead? Does that land with its full magnitude? Or is it an every-day thing, not in any way remarkable? Consider, this girl “died” and “lived again” not once, but TWICE.
So, these questions were raised among my other thoughts, thoughts of a creeping something—something akin to fatalism of the Lopit, I guess, before it was checked by truth. I don’t know why our kids keep dying—closer and closer to our inner circle of friends—and I don’t know why everything we do doesn’t help.
Kim got stung by a scorpion that night—this is how our days go lately, heaped with things—and nearly at the same time, the wailing started up again. (Funeral number three, if you’re counting.) I figured Monday had finally passed, and, when I went by the next morning to offer my sorrys, the small mound of freshly placed dirt next to the house, next to the fading mound of Tito, told me I was right.
Or, at least, I hoped I was right.
Because the alternative is really horrifying.