What has always struck me about that reading is not her despair itself, but the same despair that echoes in another scripture somewhat later on, "they have taken my Lord's body, and I do not know where they have laid him."

For me, what shines through is our own horrible impotence in the face of loss and our desperate cry for comfort, whether it's our need to berate the Lord for not being there during X situation, or our desperate desire to at least look at the dead body when we're convinced that the living thing is gone.

The thing about that, of course, is that in both situations, that impotence was covered up by a power and miracle so massive that much of the time, we forget the lament that came before it entirely.