Looking through my mail, I read a pamphlet about the WELS Medical Mission in Malawi. At the end, Pastor Cox says, "I left my heart in Malawi." Reading this, I lost it and started sobbing, leaning my head against the door. Those words could be mine.But I had myself back under control within a minute; tears dried, thought and feelings locked tightly away once more. I continued with the laundry, paying bills, organizing my house as if the episode never happened.
My adult life has been a series of tasks and routines that create walls - a facade - to hide the grief of a missing heart.
My Gram lost Grandpa over 7 years ago. They had been married over 60 years when he died and left her behind. She was so sad for the first couple of years. She just sat and thought about him, talked about him, cried because they couldn't be together anymore. Then she learned to shut it away. Now, she is mostly sad around his birthday, the anniversary of his death, or when some memory surfaces.
My symptoms are similar. The first couple of years away from Malawi were the worst. I thought about home, I talked about it, and I cried - rocking back and forth on the floor - because I couldn't be there anymore. Then I learned to shut it away. Now I only grieve when some picture, smell, sound (like an innocent-seeming pamphlet) triggers a memory.
You might think it a bit melodramatic to feel this way. After all, Malawi is still there: it's not dead like my grandpa. But the Malawi of my youth is dead, and rightly so. When I visited Malawi 7 years ago (when my grandpa died, actually), I was a stranger, an outsider. I won’t say I couldn’t live there – but it wouldn’t be the same. And, amazingly, I’m all right with that.
I still grieve, as I did when I read Pastor Cox’s quote, but not often or for long. I have other people and places to fill my heart-shaped hole. If you could see it, you’d see a stitched-together, hodge-podge affair – a bit odd, like me. But at least it’s not empty anymore. It does beg the question, however: “Can a person have more than one heart?”
