“In a little while you will not see me.  And then in a little while you will see me again.”  Jesus

“My heart will not rest until it rests in Thee.”  St, Augustine

“Absence holds the echo of a fractured intimacy.” O’Donohue

Life’s ultimate terminus is death.  A final departure from all that one has known and loved.  A leaving of the familiar to enter into the unknown.  It is each of our destinations.

Perhaps in preparation for that final departure, our lives are filled with other, smaller ones.  They are filled with various degrees of hurt and heartache, loneliness and longing.

We enter this life by departing from the familiar and friendly surroundings of our mother’s womb.  Safety and security are exchange for the traumatic event of being birthed.  And from that point on we continue to leave, journeying on our own individual life quest that leads to places that are unknown, the only certainty being that we will be absent from that place in which we have lived, and moved, and had our being.

You’ve heard it said that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Perhaps.  It depends on the nature of the absence, and the longing for which we aspire.  And it also depends on whether you’re the one leaving, or being left.  As we grow into adulthood the pattern of leaving is repeated, emotionally detaching from our mothers as a child, and then physically detaching as we go first to school, then to college, then to start a new life with another person who we hope will love us as much as we’ve been loved.  And as we age and have our own families, we become the ones remaining behind, providing the stability from which our children launch, and the safe harbor to which they may return, if only for a short time.  All the while, we experience simultaneously the ache and sense of accomplishment for a calling that has been completed.

“Everyone who leaves your life opens a subtle trail of loss that still connects you with that person.  When you think of these people, miss them, and want to be with them, your heart journeys out along that trail to where they now are.  There are whole regions of absence in every life. . . Absence is never clear cut; it reveals the pathos of human being.  Physically, each person is a single, limited object.  However, considered effectively, there are myriad pathways reaching outward and inward from your heart. The true nature of individuality is not that of an isolated identity; it is rather this active kinship with the earth and other human beings. When distance or separation opens, this connection is not voided—rather, the departed friend is now present in a different way.  They are no longer near physically, in touch, voice, or presence.  But the sore longing of their absence somehow still keeps them spiritually near.  Longing holds pathways open to the departed; it does not erase people. Absence is one of the loneliest forms of longing, and when you feel the absence of someone, you still belong with that person in some secret way.”[2]

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[1] I am writing this on the eve of the departure for Cambodia of my daughter Kayleen, and her husband Wade.  It is the most recent, and yes, painful, of the many departures I have experienced with my daughters and other loved ones in my life.  My mind travels back to the many times I left home to pursue life’s callings—real or imagined.  I know now, perhaps all too well, how it felt for my widowed mother to wave goodbye, and the hurt she surely felt as she retreated back into her house, to experience the twin emotions of loneliness and longing.  It is good that it is so painful to experience the loss of one who is close to us, as a testament to the depth of our love.

[2] “Eternal Echoes” by John O’Donohue, p. 222-223.