There is an inane and horrible little book that has become popular in certain Christian circles called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I hate to dignify the text, to increase any sort of readership (even those who will gladly loath and mock it)—but I am finding its main premise particularly troubling tonight.
The book, lacking in any real subtlety, suggests that dating is detrimental, that coupling with multiple partners over time (not only sexually, but also coveting in thought, holding hands, etc.) will slice and dice the heart into tatters. It seems that to the author the range of our love is finite, with each experience of intimacy cutting away at the soul until we are left with only remnants. Those who love too easily will only have broken shards to offer to their future mates.
Tonight I celebrate the absences.
Having found my match, my partner for life, I am fortunate to experience the fullness of constancy, the ubiquity of love. Having cared before did not mar me, having loved others did not turn my heart into a sieve. I recognize the completeness of this experience—and it is filled in more resolutely by the holes left by others.
The empty moments I have felt as friends, family, ex-boyfriends melted away into memory, vanished, and sometimes died—these fragile, beautiful human beings formed a heart that could care through pain. There have been times when the permanence of real loss, of death and resolute absence nearly crippled me. I’ve choked on sobs. I’ve screamed vengeance upon the heavens. I’ve whispered a name late at night, when I had given up on sleep.
There are spaces between joy and sorrow that come to define who we are. Between the gentle warmth of love and the suffocating grip of love lost, there are memories, moments and soft glimpses at those who people our lives. We are so much more than the person who cares and loves now—the damage, the grief, and the healing we’ve endured create the texture of the soul.
A few months before her death, a friend of mine read one of Mark Strand’s poems as part of her convocation speech.
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
The world is made up of so many absences—and it is made whole by our living in it. The heart may suffer absence, but it is held intact by bravely suffering emptiness and continuing with care.
Fearing brokenness, one may coddle the heart, and step gingerly toward love. But caring is an unsafe practice, and antipathy to grief stunts the heart. We need grief, and the scars we mend are to be lauded.
Tonight, as I remember those who have been lost to this world, tears burn in my eyes; I feel a terrible, swelling pain in my chest, and I know that they are simply, irrevocably, gone. But memory binds the heart back together. With a muddle of remembered loss and maturing love, we move on and hold on. We become whole within and because of the absences.
