Inside the crowded Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the air is steamy and smells of incense.
Over the muffled sounds of sobbing, a priest stands before the congregation, speaking. At the back of the church, pallbearers carry the caskets of Bethlehem and Yacob Gezaee through the doors.
Mourners in the back begin to cry, then to wail. A convulsive grief sweeps forward through the church like a wind, trailing the caskets.
The wailing grows louder and louder and louder, becoming almost deafening, until friends and relatives must restrain the children’s mother, Mulu Gebre Selas sie, from running toward the caskets while others hold the children’s father, Gezaee Kahsay, to keep him from falling.
Soon the crying fades, replaced by the quiet singing of the service leaders.
This is the funeral for Bethlehem and Yacob, a big sister and her little brother who died last week in a defining act of their bond. They were found on Memorial Day unconscious in the swimming pool of their family’s townhome complex in Aurora.
The children’s family and police believe 16-year-old Bethlehem jumped into the pool to save her drowning brother, then she herself drowned. Eleven- year-old Yacob was taken off life support Thursday.
“This death is not the death of one person,” family friend Teklu Abraha says later. “It is the death of these parents’ kids. And, for us, it is the death of all of our kids. That is why everyone is crying.”
Hundreds have arrived this Sunday at the church near downtown Denver for the service, spilling onto the sidewalk. Many are wrapped in traditional white prayer shawls, and others are draped in black scarves.
It is an expressive service, conducted almost entirely in the Ethiopian language of Amharic and steeped in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition of not just supporting a family in its grief but sharing in it.
“So the family knows they aren’t alone in their mourning,” one mourner, Elsa Hagos, explains.
The accident happened six months to the day after Bethlehem and Yacob arrived in the United States from Ethiopia, after seven years of separation from their father and two years from their mother while their parents secured the paperwork needed to reunite their family in America, Abraha says outside the service.
The children were so happy to see their parents that they took their parents’ shoes off and kissed their feet, he says.
“From the time they arrived, they started feeling happiness at being together,” Abraha says. “And then this happened.”
The church is raising money to pay the costs for the family to travel to Ethiopia to bury their children. About $20,000 has been raised, says church member Mulugeta Melles, with more donations collected Sunday.
“This is such a terrible thing,” Melles says. “I don’t know how they’re going to get through this.”
When the service ends, Kahsay holds a picture of his son, facing out, in front of his chest and sobs as he follows the caskets to the hearses waiting outside. Gebre Selassie sways back and forth almost in a trance.
“Is this the end of the world?” she cries, according to Abraha’s translation. “Is this the end of you? Is this the last moment to see your face?”
Then the hearses pull away, and Kahsay and Gebre Selassie are left at the church, again without their children.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
