I miss many things and many people
more than I can count, but
I will count.
The smiles of saints, women with more memories
than I can imagine, sweetness and tenacity and
realism grown from years of
hard experience.
Holding hands without fear, hugging with
awkwardness, kissing and smelling
the French perfume of a woman three times
my age as she saunters through the narthex.
Merci.
Even the time when the sound of my sermon drowned
under the echo of a woman clipping
her fingernails in
the back of the sanctuary.
Or the time a little girl tore off a piece of communion bread
nearly the size of her hand. It was
holy, a hilarious, joy-filled moment – let the children
come to me, our savior said.
In the early days, what feels like decades ago,
when the pandemic began, I foolishly thought
our rituals are stronger
than our relationships.
I panicked. I didn’t know. Even still
I miss many things and many people
more than I can count, but
I will count.
On the surreal day, when we emerge from
hibernation, like bears after an ice age,
I will miss many things and many people,
when the world awakens from a long
shadow of death,
more than I can count, but
I will count.
The time a family of faith rose from
disruptions into acres of
compassion, broken and
blessed and given
without measure.
I will miss the long lonely
phone conversations, dwelling
in each word and silence between
each word.
I will miss seeing
the ceilings of parishioners’
homes when they positioned their cameras
tilted too high or at an awkward angle
while we chatted on our computer
screens.
I will miss those small
unexpected joys of stumbling and
learning together, new technologies,
the names of which we had never
heard before we were shuttered
in our homes.
I will miss the voices and smiles
of those we lost without a proper
goodbye, without a gathering of
some sort. I will miss their understated
joy of singing, praying and
showing up, day after day.
I will miss who we were before
we lived through the valley of
the shadow of death. We were
younger then. We were less
experienced then. I will miss
not knowing what we know
now.
I will miss many things and many
people. But now, now, now
is a time not for missing but
for looking forward, always
forward to the day when
we will look back and miss.
