After a wet spring and strong windstorm, a 40-foot-tall oak tree fell in our front yard. Then, within four hours, every trace of it vanished.
We found a tree trimming crew nearby to cut up the mammoth trunk and branches, haul them away, and even grind the stump the same day. It now appears as if that tree never existed. When passersby look at the front of the house, I feel an emptiness because that oak once stood proud and sturdy.
My heart aches in a way theirs cannot. More than simply not being there…it was and now it’s not. A missing that differentiates a hole from a blank space. Or the absence of a grand tree versus the decision to never have planted one. This unusual longing, this ache, has a special word: saudade.
Saudade is a term often found in the literature and music of Brazil and Portugal. Like many rich words, the English language has no worthy equivalent. This word came to life in the 15th century when Portuguese ships sailed to Africa and Asia in hopes of opening trade routes. Some voyagers disappeared in shipwrecks, others died in battle, many simply never returned. Families left behind shouldered a constant feeling that something enormous was missing from their lives, a yearning for the presence of the loved ones who had sailed.
Saudade has been described, perhaps best, as the presence of absence.
This longing is more than something being missing or absent. Saudade is remembering your husband or son, feeling the emptiness, and knowing nothing else can fill the void. Even more strangely, the absence is a presence in your soul that you treasure. As a wound that aches to remind you of something precious that is gone, you welcome the hurt to remember the joy.
No one has known saudade like Mary, the mother of Jesus. As a young pregnant girl, her saudade was the longing for her previous reputation and life. As a new mother, she longed for familiar stability as she was on the run in Egypt to protect her baby boy. Mary felt the loss of honor as her Son was rejected, beaten, and killed. Mary must have longed for the daily presence of this man whose mission had always transcended her. And that remembrance, that ache, surely brought Mary joy.
I have felt saudade for many losses on my health journey: my energy, my security, my ability to plan for the future. Others experience this longing for the unreachable with even heavier hearts: children taken too young, marriages lost to carelessness, lives dissolved into poor decisions. We all know this mysterious missing.
The evidence of my saudade is not a physical hole or an empty imprint, but rather a piece of hardware. A metal box jutting from my chest that threatens to knock me off my feet to keep me alive. The subtle ache reminds me of the limitation-less life I once had. The presence of that box reminds me of the absence of my naive security. But in classic saudade fashion, I welcome that ache. I do have a hole representing losses, as we all do.
Without those craters, we may have sped through life and missed the important scenes where God shows up.
Just days before my internal defibrillator was installed, I wrote in my journal:
Reality of surgery is setting in. I haven’t begun to process this on so many levels: surgery hurts. I don’t like flesh wounds; I will have a foreign object protruding from my chest, reminding me of my frailty every remaining day of my life; this device is notorious for giving “inappropriate shocks,” or going off when it doesn’t need to, 30% of patients who receive one develop an anxiety disorder; and this implant is the last resort, as my doctor said, “the last card we have to play before transplant.” I’m scared that this final play won’t be enough.
God did show up, and in a big way. My heart function improved beyond anyone’s expectation. But I am not cured. I will always have heart failure and that dreaded device. The ache reminds me of what was lost, and some of it was for the better. I lost my security, but I found trust. I lost my wholeness, but I found a strange joy in the brokenness.
We all suffer from saudade. The presence of the absence is both painful and comforting. Like the majestic oak or the grand life plan, we knew it once, we remember it, and we passionately miss it. But as Christians, we know that when our existence takes a sharp turn at the edge of this life, we will fully know and experience God, and finally have our saudade satisfied.
~ By Lori Ann Wood. Lori Ann serves as the founding leader of the Parenting Education Ministry at her church. Additionally, she serves as the Women Heart Champion Community Educator for Arkansas and the American Heart Association Ambassador. Lori and her husband are parents to three young adults and have a son-in-law. They live in Bentonville, Ark. Visit her site at loriannwood.com.
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