Missing

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    March 10, 2024

Not a deep sadness. Not a dark heaviness. More like a soreness, a tenderness, the ache of the unfinished. Lately, I’ve been a mourner at an exceptional number of funerals, not my own relatives and friends, but those of others’. Standing as a witness to the fresh pain and loss etched on a newly bereaved person’s face has a way of turning me to remember my own not-so-recent pain and loss. To remember what it was like to be ushered into that club to which no one wants membership—the club of those who are newly orphaned, no matter their age.

No surprise to me, then, that I’m revisiting the losses of the first half of my life. In my first fifty years (yes, I’m being optimistic that I’ll make it to one hundred, as my maternal grandmother did), I experienced the death of both of my parents, ten years apart. Though I grieved their passing keenly at the time they died, their absence these decades later sometimes has the feel of a wound long closed but perhaps healed tentatively, as if there’s raw skin underneath the scar.

There’s a sharp awareness that the moment of death is not the end of grieving. Later may come the grief of “I wish…”. That I had asked more questions. That I had learned new details of what their lives were like before I came onto the scene. That for one moment more I could sit in the living room with my mother as we each entered the world of a gripping book and then compared notes. That I could again catch the delight in my father’s eyes as he fished from the surf and relished his contemplative time.

And then there are the losses out of time, the ones that leave a jagged edge on everything. The sudden death of my not quite two-year-old nephew more than four decades ago is an entirely different ache. So much was in bud and incomplete. That ache is more of a wondering. I wonder how his emerging personality would have developed.  I wonder what kind of person he might have grown into. What would his laughter sound like now, and what experiences would have coaxed that out of him? What might have broken his heart and what might have put it back together again? Who and what would he love?

I tap into the communion of saints often as I’m in frequent conversation with these dear ones. I visit my parents’ graves whenever I’m near the shore and tell them what’s going on and how much I miss them. They were always such good listeners, so why should it be any different now?

My consolation comes from a deep, intuitive knowing that those who have loved and protected us in this life continue to cherish us when they live in risen life. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the familiar holy ones that we have called by name and the host of holy ones with whom our past never intersected. Except that now, in risen life, we do connect. Now we stand beneath a shower of compassion flowing from countless lives given over in love and service. Now we’re blessed by the witness of others who, like us, experienced the thin line between heartache and hope, but who chose to keep hoping, chose to keep going, chose to keep showing up for the good of the planet. Because of these holy ones, we’re that much closer to grasping what they now see in its fullness: that no act of love is ever lost, forgotten, or wasted. May it be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Invite those you loved who are now experiencing risen life to join you in this stillness.
Bask in their presence for a while.
If you desire, share with them what you hold in your heart.
Then give thanks for the gift of their presence, then and now.

Featured Image: Alexander Grey, Unsplash

NOTE:
Thank you for your prayer for all who were part of a Lenten retreat day I led at the IHM Spirituality Center in Bryn Mawr, PA. We had a capacity crowd whose energy was electric and whose sharing was profound. An added blessing for me was the surprise appearance of some of my beloved IHM Associates. I am truly grateful and basking in the memory of our time together.

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