He Is Not Here

I lost my son two years ago. Easter has been the hardest Sunday of the year since then — all that talk of resurrection when what I feel is absence. This Palm Sunday I went to the early service alone, half-expecting to leave early. The pastor read the familiar words: "He is not here. He has risen." And something in me heard those words differently than I ever had. Not as a theological statement but as a personal one. As if spoken to me, about my son, about where he is. I did not stop grieving. But I left that service carrying something I had not walked in with. A small, stubborn, unreasonable hope.