Sometimes Silence Says Far More Than Words Can Possibly Express

When someone loses a child, sometimes the only thing you can do is be there silently letting them know you understand that the totality of this person who was their son was endlessly beyond what language can describe.

I continue to try to make sense of the loss of a much loved friend at the end of last week — was it really just then? It seems like we’ve been going through it for an eternity, an idea I hate to give breath to since his loss then seems to outweigh his life, and anyone who knew him would understand that would be something that made him unhappy.

I suppose we all go through loss at some point in our lives. It’s inevitable as life in this physical world does not last forever and it is the rare individual who leaves without having someone they loved leave it before them.

When we talk about PTSD, we say that the trauma is something outside the realm of normal human experience. That while we have to cope with hard things in this world like loss, it is part of the human condition and so somewhere within us is the ability to cope with it. Yet at this moment, I find it hard to believe this, and wonder if I was giving lip service to some kind of condescending rhetoric all those times I treated those who had come through a harrowing experience or period. I am finding it very hard to remain grounded, to cope with this loss.

The worst moment thus far came earlier today when I spoke with his father. I wanted to be able to be there for him, to offer whatever small amount of consolation that I might be able to with special memories that let him know that others, too, were aware of how truly amazing and wonderful his son had been. I started out this way, and I tried to not make it about my own grief and sense of loss, I did.

But then I heard myself saying that I’d thought about him a few weeks before, had wanted to call him or at least get in touch, how I hadn’t and that I’d always regret it, how I’d lost so many opportunities to be able to connect with someone so incredibly special. This put his father in the position of having to console me, telling me that we couldn’t live in the past, couldn’t regret the things we hadn’t done or we’d never get past it. I felt so small, and selfish, even more so when I found that I did in fact feel a bit better from his words.

I suppose this too, is letting myself wallow in regrets instead of perhaps letting myself accept my own human fallibility. Yet I can’t imagine what a profound loss it is to lose a child in his prime without any warning whatsoever, the shock of never holding him in your arms again, never seeing him have children and become the amazing father you know he’d be, never see him play with his much younger brothers or the hero worship in their eyes.

How do you let go of all the hopes and dreams you’d had for him for 33 years, or 34 since these undoubtedly began as soon as you knew he existed even before he was born? There are the things I can only think, cannot ever say to his parents, his brothers, his husband.

The question of what I can say to help ease their pain, bewilderment, and heart wrenching grief is one I have yet to answer. Perhaps, there isn’t anything. Perhaps it’s enough for them to know how much I also loved him, how he will always be a part of me and the memories I have of him since he was a boy will also be forever inscribed in my mind.

Sometimes there are no words, can’t be because something is so beyond the limitations that language imposes to make it impossible that any could exist. I have come to the conclusion that sometimes it’s best to not try to force something into the boundaries of language when that can’t help but fail to render anything other than the most superficial of comfort as the truth is so much greater and endless.

So for now, I only text, “I’m here,” then let them decide when or if they want to share their words or their silence.

Thermal Need

Located between glaciers On a cold, high plateau This soul in need of warmth - Like seeking like - Could no longer remain

What we have come to find familiar If not fully acceptable Despite accepting it Was beyond its ability To be able to tolerate

And so It took the rocks From it’s pockets That had held it in place For so long

And soared

Natalie Frank has had her poetry featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost. Her fiction has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol.

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You can find links to all of the articles, stories, fiction and poetry I publish on Medium here. Thank you for reading and for supporting Mental Gecko.