07/25/2024
The “Missing” Room
There is a house where I live, and its name is Grief. There are many rooms in this house, one of the largest is the “missing” room. In this room holds all the unspoken hopes, dreams, and expectations of life that I once gripped tightly to, that I once felt entitled to. It holds milestones, birthdays, and holidays. It holds vacations, dinners around the table, and your place in our family photos. It holds smiles and hugs and making new memories. It holds your voice, your laughter, your presence. It holds the mundane and the extraordinary. It holds your place in my heart. It holds time, the clock stuck at the exact moment you left me. It holds my life before losing you.
I sit curled up against a bare wall in the stale, vacant, “missing” room with the only dim light coming from a small, foggy, four-paned window. My body is in a tightly formed ball on the hard, wooden floor, my knees pulled in close to my chest, my arms wrapped like a hug around them, my head down, resting on my knees. I hear a gentle, but audible knock on the door. My head lifts as an involuntary reaction to the noise and I cautiously respond to the Person on the other side of the closed door with an unassured “come in”.
He slowly enters the “missing” room and starts walking towards me, one intentional step at a time. My tears don’t stop just because He came in, in fact, they seem to fall harder as He comes closer. He makes His way across the room, comes to a stop in front of me, and starts to kneel. Disappointment starts to fill my heart as I look up at Him, look past Him, and realize He’s alone. My cries become stronger, and my wails louder, as I berate Him with questions and fits of rage. He reaches out to console me and I become rigid; He could have stopped the unimaginable, unbearable pain this room holds, but for reasons I’ll never know or understand, He chose not to.
I was mad that He was there, especially alone, but I also didn’t want Him to leave. I clenched my jaw as He reached out and embraced me. That’s when I noticed He was crying, too.
Slowly, my anger softened. I began to unpeel my arms from the grasp they had around my knees and started to reach for Him. The more I released my anger, the more I noticed His strength holding me and His tears joining mine. Together, we wept.
The “missing” room was silent except for the whimpers that accompanied our tears. Our bodies were still except for the way they shuddered with every exhale. He didn’t rush me, because He knew that no amount of time would heal a wound so deep. He didn’t try to fix me, because He knew this type of pain was unfixable. He didn’t fill the empty space and uncomfortable awkwardness with meaningless words that fail to take away the hurt or make sense of the loss. He simply held me, allowing my broken and weary soul to find the rest it so desperately needed.
As our tears slowed, the sniffles quieted and our bodies calmed, the storm of grief having passed through. He gently leaned back, just enough to turn and situate Himself next to me. His back was now plastered against the wall next to mine, His legs, one bent into his chest, one straight ahead of Him, solidly supported Him upon the ground. He draped one arm around the back of my shoulders, the other across my chest, and clasped His hands on the far side of my body. I nestled my head into the crook of His neck and leaned into His embrace. I felt my body relax as I allowed Him to pull me close to His chest.
I’m not sure how long I stayed there, but when the pain eased enough for me to face my brutal reality once again, I pulled my head upright, watched Him slowly stand to His feet, and walk towards the door. He looked back at me with a look that held compassion, empathy, and understanding. He didn’t like that I had to have this “missing” room in my house, He hated it as much as I did. But He was grateful that I invited Him in to share such a sacred, intimate space together.
He gently closed the door, my eyes fixed on Him, until the sound of the lock clicking into the frame echoed throughout the room, snapping my gaze back to the emptiness around me. It was then that I realized even though I wasn’t free from pain, tears, questions, or anger while He was in the room, there was something comforting, perhaps healing, about having Him there in the “missing” with me.
