My eager feet faltered. I stopped cold, halted by the blast of emptiness that prevented me from crossing the threshold. Bedlinens, which had just hours before had been soft and warm as they cocooned the children nestled inside, now braced themselves crisp and cool in their exposure. Gone were the restful faces with dream-inspired smiles. Gone were the sweet-smelling, freshly shampooed strands of light-brown hair that had splayed with abandon across the mounds of pillows. Gone were the books and tablets, the still-folded clean clothes and the growing pile of those ready to wash. Gone were toiletry kits and rolling bags and the girls who wheeled them away.
So enormous was the sense of loss, I had to catch my breath, simultaneously fighting the catch in my throat. This was the part of the visit I had begun dreading days before it occurred. Why was it that this re-entering just-emptied rooms made the loss more tangible than the continued waving at rapidly disappearing taillights?
I am not unfamiliar with this scene. It has happened too many times! Yet in spite of foreboding anticipation, I am never prepared. Each time it happens, I foolishly embrace the futile hope that such oft-repeated departures have buffered my heart.
Instead, each new departure scratches old scars and reopens old wounds. The doorway into a recently vacated room serves as the gateway for old memories. A pantheon of pain taunts me with recollections of every time I have been left behind, whether for a semester or a season or a lifetime. The knowledge that my loved ones enjoy vibrant and productive lives away from me is scant comfort. My only defense against this unwelcome invasion is the hope that this absence is temporary and more good visits will certainly come in time.
I know I am not the first person to feel the loss of a freshly emptied room. My mother-in-law always asked me not to strip the beds after family visits because she needed the closure of going back into our rooms and remembering our time together. But even she, the least slothful housekeeper I have ever known, admitted she had to wait a few days until the raw pain of our departure ebbed and her own courageous and practical nature again flowed.
But this time, as I pulled back the covers and tugged at the sheets, it was not my mother-in-law I thought about. It was Mary and her friends, the women who came with spices to prepare the lifeless body of Jesus for burial. I imagined what they must have felt as they entered the tomb, expecting to find the body of their Lord and reeling from the stark emptiness they found there.
They stared into a void illuminated only by the glowing presence of an angelic messenger. What they could not see—the lifeless body of the One whom they came to serve—was what held their gaze. The absence, and the burial cloth. Empty. Precisely folded. Such an unexpected courtesy would not go unnoticed by women whose role it was to tend to such menial tasks. It signaled to them an object no longer needed and ready for storage; it was a haunting visual echo of his final words, “It is finished.”
It was the final blow to hearts pummeled by the pain of watching him mocked and tortured, of witnessing his agonizing death, of experiencing the mind-numbing loss of their savior and friend. They had sobbed their good-byes while he took his last breath; they had spent three days grieving their loss. Here in the empty tomb, it felt as if they had lost him anew.
An avalanche of memories nearly buried these women who had been part of Jesus’s inner circle, caught up in the whirlwind of crowds following the teacher and healer. In the briefest of minutes three years flashed before their eyes. They remembered the sick he had healed, the lame who now walked. They recalled how he rebuked the arrogant and spoke tenderly to the humble. They remembered especially his way with children and his unaccustomed honor toward women.
Slowly the words of the messenger penetrated their grief-stunned hearts. “He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said….He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him [again].” They hurried away, full of grief and fear, but strangely settled by a growing hope. He would come again.
So it is with empty rooms and empty tombs.
