The heart is the tomb

It has been a rough last few days.

I kind of always knew that the people I share this home with do not like each other. Unlike many other families (or perhaps a lot like others?), there was this quiet understanding that they were only staying together because of me. This is a fact I found out for myself slowly, but surely, in the last fifteen years or so. I think we were all fine with that understanding pervading our everyday lives. We provide for each other regardless, and have love for each other that fills us enough - I believe - to go on about our days without much suffering. I have no illusions that my parents' love is grand and great and marvelous. That they treat each other decently most of the time, and continuously give me all the comfort they possibly could, is something I am always very grateful for. I see no reason for me to complain.

But being stuck together because of the quarantine, misery was bound to rear its ugly head at some point.

I am tired. The way things are (and have always been) is exhausting. But this is the reality that some of us have to face, the cross that we have to carry: this is just how it is. Families are difficult. Dealing with people you do not inherently like is exhausting. But we cannot complain. More people have less in life, more people are in so much more pain, more people are hungrier for a real kind of love.

Today, I tuned in to an online celebration of the Mass for Easter. The bishop said, "The heart is the tomb. Our heart is the empty dwelling where we keep our fears, our anger, our anxiety." I think this much is true, especially in the last couple of weeks. And the truth was, I no longer know how to pray this kind of pain away. It's so difficult to lift this all above, when the very people who taught me how, are the ones who are treating each other horribly. It is very easy to lose sight of what it means to know the divine, when what often gets thrown around is irreverence.

I am tired, and I am angry, and I feel alone. But I have to remind myself - again, and again, and again - that Jesus died because he understood what it means to be in pain. The heart is the tomb. Jesus died, entered that tomb, and forever left it empty. His resurrection left us satiated. May this Easter carry us out of our own loneliness, our own tombs, and leave us all free from fear, darkness, and sadness.