HeartACHE ... HeartBREAK.

I am staring at this little boy sitting in a stroller eating ice cream.  He is about a year old, if I had to guess and has a small red mark on his forehead – a birthmark.  I must have been staring at him rather intensely because when I look up, his mother is staring at me.  I smile and say, “I’m sorry.  I was just thinking of my grandson who is about your son’s age.  I was imagining him eating ice cream and missing him.”

HeartACHE.

Yesterday afternoon I walked out of our apartment and onto the street.  He was sitting right next to our door.  He is an older man who smokes too much – most Palestinian men smoke too much.  He is often sitting somewhere on the street.  In summer he sits in the shade and in winter he sits in the sun.  (By the way, do you know how to tell a local from a tourist?  The locals walk on the shady side of the street.) 

This old smoker is sitting on the shady side of this street and right next to our door.  I didn’t see him at first, because I’m not looking for him to be sitting right there.  He never sits there.

He is waiting for me.  As I turn to walk down the street, he says, “Hello.”  He has a smoker’s voice.  I stop, turn around and see him.  I like him.  He’s a good man and I’m glad to see him.  He helped me with a wiring problem once.  “Hello,” I say back.  “How are you?”  He never looks very well.

“Not good,” he says.  “Not good.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“It is my son,” he replies, voice breaking.  “He is in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry, “ I say.  “What’s wrong with him?”

“A soldier broke him,” he says.  He is speaking Arabic and I don’t know exactly what was broken.  I only understand that his son is “broke.”  He hands me the doctor’s report.  It is bad.  I’m surprised to see that the son is only a boy – 14 years old.  He has a broken hip.  Three screws have been fixed to hold it in place while it heals.  The report reports that the boy will always walk with a limp.

I ask the question you are asking: “What did he do?”

Smoke circles up in front of the old man's eyes.  He blinks once, again, and once more.  “My son has seeing problems.  He was running and he ran around a corner (he motions this to me) and into an Israeli soldier.  The soldier was angry and beat my son.”  That’s his story and you can believe it or not, but believe this …

HeartBREAK!

Yesterday, in an email, our daughter told us about Emma’s first bus ride.  It is a trial run for kindergarten students.  At the end of the ride our granddaugher gave the bus driver a high-five. I could see her doing this.  I could see her eyes as she sat in the big seat -- blue eyes embedded in the black vinyl.  I could see her turning her head to look at the children sitting behind her and beside her.  She does this with a certain anxiety, but also with the hope of finding a new friend.  I could feel her little heart beating with excitement, expectation and joy.  I could see all this and see exactly what I was missing.

HeartACHE!

Then later in that same day I read of two Gazan children killed by Israeli tank fire – a third is lying in a hospital bed with severe brain damage.  The children are cousins, 12, 10 and 8.  The two dead children are two of eight killed just this week by the Israeli army.  It used to be that the Israeli government would say that they deeply regretted the loss of innocent life.  But they don’t have to say this anymore because nobody notices the deaths of these children of Gaza.   Those who do, don't think of them as innocent.  I think of the parents and grandparents of these children and I think …

HeartBREAK!

A heartache can be a positive moment.  A heartache reminds you of someone you love and miss, but will see again, and then the joy is measurably greater for having missed that someone.  A heartache can even bring a smile, as it did for me as I watched that little boy eat his ice cream and read about Emma high-fiving the bus driver.

But a heartbreak is not positive, and does not bring a smile, because a heartbreak is a fission, a tearing, ripping apart.  A heartbreak is a heart broken, and a broken heart, like a broken hip, never mends completely, and always aches.

Heartache lends the hope of absence making the heart grow fonder.  Heartbreak offers no such hope because the absence, is first and foremost, an absence of hope itself.  My friend does not believe that his son has a future.  He has no hope.  The parents of the dead children know that their children have died unknown and unnoticed by most of the world.  They know that these, their own flesh-and-blood, are already on the way to being forgotten by all but they, themselves. And down deep in their broken hearts, these fathers and mothers worry that one day they too will stop missing their absent children.  They won’t, of course, but the fear of it remains, and even happy moments are shaded with guilt.

HeartACHE … heartBREAK.  They are not the same.

Today, my aching heart lifts up to God a prayer or two for those parents and grandparents who have had their hearts broken.  What I feel is not the same, not even close, but close enough to give me pause to think of someone other than myself.  This too is the gift of heartache.