Holy Heartbreak

I just got off the phone with my mother. We shared the usual updates on loved ones, health, recent events, and the soon approaching holiday visitation "schedule."

Let's take that last item: holiday visitation with the extended family. I find myself dealing with the same frustration I often experience in a house full of teenagers, namely, the often daily question: when will you be home for dinner? (Or what my heart is asking, when will we be all together?) Don't get me wrong, I am thankful that I have active, involved and responsible teens, but gosh, I really miss them at the dinner table--be it for high school sports, or the part-time job. Last Sunday we unexpectedly found all 5 of us home (a fall sport had just ended) and my husband promptly invited us all out to dinner, just to celebrate being together!

Our extended family forms a geographical triangle between Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. There are only so many days off, and so much time to visit, not to mention the time and resources to traverse to all these places. But even with advanced planning, it seems we still "miss" some family grouping on a given holiday. If we go to New York for one holiday, we need to go to New Jersey for another. Its a series of delicate trade-offs and negotiations. And that's just for relatives, add in visiting friends in either region, and there's a secondary matrix of complications. That old joke about families only getting together for weddings and funerals is sounding less funny these days.

As I spoke to my mother, I was listening in between the lines, you know-- the radar of capturing what's not being said. I heard the longing that we will miss each other on yet another holiday. I feel that too. But at times, I am powerless to change the circumstances to remedy it.

I have no great solutions on how to fix the problem of long-distance-relatives-longing-to-be-closer. I do have the determination to muddle through: to do our best, to make plans, to look forward to the plans we can make, and in between we will call.

In the end, its a holy heartbreak whenever we are separated from our loved ones, whatever the reasons. I wonder if this is one of the reasons that Jesus left us the Eucharist before he died? He was anticipating the separation, and wanted the apostles to stay together, to remember, to share a meal.

I know we have a God who understands the human longing of separation, given Jesus' weeping over the peoples of Jerusalem who "missed" his visitation, and his tears for his friend Lazarus in the tomb. After all, when we were separated from him by sin, the Father sent his Son to rescue us.

Sometimes, when I am at Mass, and especially when I am missing someone I love, I imagine Jesus being the invisible link through the distance to that other person. And if I can also think of that person receiving communion at a another Mass somewhere far from me, I almost experience a kind of transcendent unity with that person. We can have that unity in Christ, if nothing else.

We long for communion, plain and simple. We're made for it, it's built in. Communion with others and with God.