The Person You are Looking for is No Longer Here

As a professor of practical theology, I often find myself talking about grief during class. All of my former students have likely heard me say more than once, “Grief is the most difficult emotion for human beings to bear. We will choose to feel anything else—self-blame, anger, depression, hatred–to avoid feeling the pain of loss.“

Parenthood, if we’re paying attention, is filled with grief. Every milestone is often simultaneously wonderful and awful. I’ve been feeling that a lot this summer as my child prepares to leave for college: my heart welling with joy and pride just as it’s breaking open with grief. My psyche has tried many, many strategies to protect me from feeling that ache of loss, especially those tried-and-true parental ruts of guilt and shame about ALL those mistakes I made over the course of 18 years.

One morning, as I started realizing what was happening in my spirit, I decided to walk on the gorge trail that leads to a waterfall near my house. We had just had a heavy rain, so the normal trickle of the stream was a full-on raging river. I saw something—maybe a stick or a duck or a piece of trash—floating down the rapids in my direction, bumping into rocks along the way. Could it be a duck? It looked so stable and calm, not panicked at all in the chaos of the water, just going wherever the current took it. As it neared a two-foot-high drop, I thought, Okay, this is where I’ll find out if it’s a duck because surely a duck wouldn’t let itself just drop over a ledge that high.

But then it dropped right over the ledge and kept floating. When it got closer to me, I could see it was a duck—completely giving in to, and maybe even enjoying, the wild ride through the rapids. That’s what I need to do, I thought. I need to let the river carry me to whatever comes next and trust the water to guide me.

The Myrrh-bearing women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, whose feast day we acknowledge on August 3, are the first to arrive at the tomb of Jesus after the sabbath. They arrive together to anoint his body—a ritual of love, care, and saying goodbye. I imagine anointing the body of their dear friend for burial is the last thing they ever wanted to do. But it is also one of the last remaining ways to physically show love to the person they knew. It offers them a sense of purpose in the face of terrible shock and grief. But of course, there is no body in the tomb. Instead, a “young man” dressed in white greets them with the news that Jesus of Nazareth is no longer there, and in fact, has gone ahead of them on the road to Galilee. 

He is not here.

From the earliest days of parenting—like the moment he suddenly stopped nursing as an infant—I’ve noticed these quiet turning points. In elementary school, without warning, he no longer wanted to hold my hand on the walk to school. On the night of high school graduation, in a flash, the rule that he tell me when he’d be home that night changed from something I required to a courtesy he chose to extend. I think of all the times throughout my parenting that I’ve gone looking to provide care for my child and then been shown in one way or another: the person you are looking for is no longer here. In fact, he has gone ahead of you. 

It later dawned on me that the guilt and shame I felt over aspects of my parenting were a lot like approaching a waterfall in a river with my spirit desperately trying to grasp whatever little twig or rock it can to keep from going over. Guilt and shame are powerful in that way; they can provide strength we never knew we had to hold onto the past. But oh, the price we pay to live in that already-gone world of yesterday is steep. With our children, it’s the price of being in relationship with who they are now, instead of a memory of who they once were.

He walked ahead of me after graduation, too, mingling and laughing with his best friends. And as we headed to the car that night, a deep happiness and peace came over my spirit. Why had I been so worried? Why was I tortured with self-doubt? There he stood, so much more self-aware and mature than I was at his age, more self-possessed than I maybe ever have been in my whole life. And he still looked back to smile at me. I was not a perfect mother; such a thing does not exist. I know I made mistakes along the way, but they pale in comparison to the person he is and is becoming despite those mistakes.

I feel like I’ve gone over this particular waterfall now, though I am increasingly aware that more are downstream, perhaps even in rapid succession and without warning. We attended his college orientation a few days later, where his joy and excitement made me feel joyful and excited, too. Love is rough, the way it ties our well-being to the well-being of others. Love is terrifying, the way it always has loss embedded in its very being. Love is a miracle, the way it carries us into the future.