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CHRISTOPHER S. EPPS: Accounting and Poetry

 

Geneva Epps has not given up hope that the son she had late in life is alive. "I'm just being hopeful and prayerful," she said of Christopher S. Epps, her seventh child and second son. "I just can't seem to give up. I know that I'm not considered very wise and not facing reality. But the reality is that no one has showed me any proof that he is not alive."

Sister Epps, as she is called at the Greater Zion Baptist Church in the Bronx, knows that the 29-year-old Mr. Epps, an accountant for Marsh & McLennan, was in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. "He said, `Bye, Mom, see ya later,' " she recalled. "And I said, `Have a blessed day.' And that was it."

Now she focuses on a September day in 2000 when her church honored her, and Mr. Epps recited from memory a poem he had stayed up all night writing.

There were times when I was faced with danger

And fear filled my head.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;

I remember what Sister Epps said.

She asked the Lord every morning to watch over my life.

I live today because God heard her plea.

Now I go through this life as a grown man fast in your words.

Please order my steps, for you are the Father.

Others who love her call her Sister Epps,

But I am just proud to call her my mother.

 

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times