The Heart Cannot Break Enough

 Looking at photos from years past, 

When Summers included trips to the pool and library, 
When Falls had dances and track and plays and a thousand errands
and the stillness of not being able and not knowing when we will be
cracks the soul. 

Looking at memories, casually dashed off notes
lamenting the need to go here and there, of having
a fuller schedule than time would seem to allow
all we missed

Now, all the whos we are missing.  
The get togethers that we planned then
that reminded us we should get together more
now can't be

And waiting for when it will be allowed
Comes without an end in sight, only a hope

My sister and mom went to visit my aunt. 
She's dying and yet, in that hour of visiting, 
both my mom and my sister told me, my aunt lived all the minutes
like she's lived all her life.  

My cousin gave birth to a baby girl today. 
Proof that joy abounds even in times such as these. 
We have photos and memories and phones and computers. 
We don't have to stay isolated...

The photos remind us of those moments when we were like my aunt, 
when we lived more than the ordinary rules of time usually allow, 
when we stopped the errands to be present to each other.  

When we stopped for joy.  When we stopped because we love.  
Covid stinks and there's no denying this reality requires all of us to love enough to suffer, 
to love enough to not be there incarnationally with those  we love...
but we can always be present.   

We can always fill every moment with something better than merely time.  
We can live so that we are present, and the present becomes timeless.  
Our hearts cannot be broken enough to stop loving, 
Our lives cannot be broken enough to stop living, 

if we but will it.