Ani

Olive lost one of her friends a few weeks ago right before Easter and our little (big) community has been in shambles. For weeks now, we've been grasping at something that can never make sense, not really knowing what else to do except feel the weight of it all. Several families gathered together in the school library to make bracelets, paint words and affirmations onto stones, write letters to them, lean into memories.  This was the Thursday before Easter- a day when, in my previous evangelical life-, I would normally be preparing for the Maundy-Thursday service. Yes, death is part and parcel to the Easter story; I can still remember the somberness of that service with its dim lights and introspective music, how much of a production it felt even then to manifest a grief that was always cushioned with, “But...Sunday is coming.” 

I left that afternoon thinking how there is just no version of that phrase that fits here now- or ever. There isn't any Easter Sunday morning sermon that rights this or allows us to exhale.

I left that afternoon, actually, thinking about Mary. Numb with grief. Traumatized. Staying behind until they took her baby off the cross. I think how she was probably the last one to leave, had to be dragged away, that she would (rightfully) slap anyone who came at her with, "well, at least..."

We are not supposed to bury out children. It is not the order of things.

To cushion this with any kind of hope feels trite and clichéd. Instead, I’ve witnessed that when we simply honor our grief- and the grief of those around us- we do see a glimpse of hope- one that exists in simply being together in the hard, unknown, unfathomable. We aren't alone. That's it. And even though I've long divorced myself from the church, this is the message of Jesus that will always resonate- that I can somehow witness something breathtaking even as I walked my daughter up a hill on a warm, breezy day in May toward her own grief.

Walking each other home, letting ourselves imagine the magnitude of loss, keeping our eyes wide open when we want to turn away.. is going to feel like having the air knocked right out of us. It's what we actually signed up for, in exchange for another day.

Heartache, like hope, is never meant to be carried alone. 

ETA: When Olive returned to school, she drew this picture and titled it "Heaven On Earth." To try and write about it would be a disservice to her grief. So with her permission, I asked the amazing Katie Davis at Salvation Tattoo to make it part of me instead.