Holes. My life is riddled with holes—and so is your life, too. These holes were left in my life when those much-loved left the planet, leaving behind the gaping holes of their absence. These loved ones have taken up such prominent places in our lives, our relationships with them defining so much a part of our being, that when they are gone, the silence of their absence is always with us. Other events, such as separation and divorce, also can leave holes in our lives. I remember my parents leaving me, along with my brother and sister, at the dormitory each week, leaving my life riddled with the holes of separation, rejection, loneliness, and a longing for my parent’s love that stubbornly won’t be quieted. A sorrow arises, an old regret, well-worn and familiar, like a moth-eaten wool sweater with too many memories, making it difficult for me to discard.

Nevertheless, Kathy’s death left a question-shaped hole in my life. We all had so fervently prayed, asking God to rescue her life, believing that she would survive. The silence of God’s absence shook me, “Why did you take her? Why didn’t you answer our prayers?”

The first hole left by the departure of a family member came in 1971 when we were home on “furlough” from Japan. We moved in with Mamma’s mother, Nettie, in Boise, Idaho. She lived in a cozy, white framed house, surrounded by a large lawn with a peach tree, oxheart cherry tree, and a row of raspberries in the back of her garage. A little over a week before Christmas, Gramma went into the hospital with a bout of emphysema. On the night before she was to come home, a nurse accidentally turned up her oxygen instead of turning it down. The nurse’s seemingly small error took Gramma’s life. Her death came six days before Christmas, her gifts already purchased, wrapped, and placed under the tree. In those few days left before Christmas, Mamma left her gifts under the tree, but on Christmas Eve and morning, Mamma had removed her gifts. The absence of Gramma’s gifts under the tree and the absence of her presence in her favorite chair reflected the gaping hole in Mamma’s life, and so, in turn, my life. Gramma was the only grandparent I had the privilege of knowing.

My father’s father died thirty-six years before I was born—just four days after Christmas. My father’s mother died three years before I was born—on Mamma’s birthday while my family was living in Japan. And Mamma’s father died five years before my birth. The absence of their presence in my parents’ lives left an absence of their presence in my life, leaving Gramma Nettie my sole living grandparent. The holes of sorrow and grief in our parents’ lives become hard-to-detect holes in our lives—holes inside of holes inside of holes, an elusive sorrow passed on from our past that won’t be stilled.

In 1972, nine months after we interred Gramma Nettie in Mountain View Memorial Park in Boise, Idaho, and nine days before our return to Japan, Mamma discovered a large lump under her arm while preparing to attend a wedding. Before that night, I was excitedly anticipating our return to Japan because for the first time we would be living close enough to Christian Academy in Japan to commute by train daily to school—no longer in the dorms. Our luggage was packed for Japan, waiting in the basement of the house in which we were staying while the owners were away for an extended trip in Europe. Eleanor and I had fashioned a giant maze for our toy poodle out of the suitcases and trunks through which she had to find her way.

Later that week, Eleanor and I sat in the car waiting for Mamma and Daddy to come out of the clinic where they were seeing an oncologist. A year before, Mamma had seen a doctor while we were living in Bosie about the lumps she had found in her breast. The doctor had told her, “Those are just from mastitis. You’re being a worrywart, Laura Belle!” After nearly three hours in the car, an excruciating wait for my sister and me, Mamma and Daddy, came out of the clinic and told us that Mamma had metastatic breast cancer, words that came with such shock. This mother, who had been the source of such love, nurture, and compassion, was now being taken from us. Mamma asked the Lord for five years; He gave her three. Her death left a gaping, torn, angry hole of overwhelming grief in my life, a grief like an angry Pacific storm in which I didn’t know how to stay afloat. During those three years, Mamma’s cancer dropped us into a maze of emotions with no way out—save through her death. I grieved my way through high school and then through five years of drinking and drug abuse, but I found little or no comfort. Finally, after a severe head injury, which brought me to my senses, the Lord intervened, giving me a class of people at Evergreen State College who listened to these painful stories.

The silence of Mamma’s absence has been a hole in my life for nearly forty-nine years. That gaping hole has never become smaller, but I’ve just grown larger through the powerful grace of Jesus in my life. Since Mamma’s death, many other holes have been added to my life: my father’s and his eldest sister’s deaths—just a few years apart—followed by Dad’s other three sisters’ passings. Nancy’s parents died while our family was living in Bremerton, close enough for Nancy to be with her dad and mom at their deaths. Most of our beloved first-generation mission family are home with the Lord—except three still with us—as well as some of their children who have died, leaving our lives with more large holes. Having conducted nearly fifty memorials while at Grace Covenant Church, those deaths have filled our lives with the holes of so many people who were much beloved and now missed.

During the amassing of so many holes in my life, I have found that only one thing can fill these holes: the tender compassion and love of Jesus. We yearn for the presence and love of those no longer here, yet I have found that only the God of all comfort can comfort me in my grief—filling the holes with His presence. His love is wide enough, long enough, high enough, and deep enough to fill the most gaping of holes to the smallest. For nearly ten years, I tried to stuff the hole of Mamma’s death with all kinds of remedies and rags: intense Bible study, prayer, church, drugs, alcohol, debauchery. But nothing was able to assuage the overwhelming tsunami of pain washing over me—until Jesus found me.

As we grow older, there are more and more empty places at our tables, no knife, fork, or spoon set, yet the deafening silence of the absence of their presence always with us. One day—by the grace of Jesus and through faith in Him—all these holes will be closed and healed. The Apostle John puts the coming hope this way in Revelation 21:3–4: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’” The collective, generational sorrow and all our individual sorrows will have passed away—no more “death or mourning or crying or pain.” I long for that day.

In thinking about all these holes in my life and your lives, I’ve thought about what kind of hole I will leave in other’s lives—even in your lives. Will it be a Grant-shaped hole? No, I desire that when people think of me, their thoughts will turn to the tender and powerful grace of Jesus; his endless, unfathomable compassion; his immeasurable, boundless, and unconditional love; and his ever-present peace—not only the peace which he gives but the peace that is himself. As a dear mentor, Ron Magnuson, once told me, “We are all trophies of his grace.” In the end, as the Holy Spirit labors to form Christ in me, I want to leave a Jesus-shaped hole in all your lives—not of my doing, but entirely through the presence, love, and work of Jesus in my life. I want to leave a Jesus-shaped hole that only he can fill—yet one day, when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, there will be no more holes.

© 2024 by Grant Christensen. "Freely you have received, freely give." (Matthew 10:8b NIV) You are free to share--copy and redistribute in any medium or format--as long as you don't change the content and don't use commercially without permission of the author or author's family.