Words Fail Emotions

There is a fundamental problem we have as humans and that is that we invented words and then made the mistake of letting them become the feeble container of what we really meant. Though poets can write volumes in just a few short lines of well-chosen words, somewhere around the space of emotions, words just fail.

I am certain that if you look up the word "love" in a dictionary it would say something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about some person or thing." And I am equally certain that such a definition doesn't enter the neighborhood of the length and depth and breadth of the actual feeling I have for my wife or my children. That definition (or any definition) doesn't have the color, depth, vibrancy, history, pain, joy, pleasure, and myriad other dimensions that my love has at any nanosecond.

And grief, I believe, is more complex.

I was reading my daughter's blog as she prepared to eulogize her step-dad Jon Choate, and let the half dozen other responses from friends and family sink in, really touch my inner being, as I read through them. And I am in awe at the texture and dimensions of grief/love that abound in and through all of that discussion. That we humans are capable of such love and only then open to such pain and loss is beyond miraculous. It is stunningly beautiful. There are no words when smiles and tears and love and pain all embrace each other simultaneously. There is only being.

My friend Bill had a daughter born 18 years ago so severely handicapped that she never walked, talked or even fed herself. Faced with the option of institutionalizing her, Bill and his wife decided to love her for as long as she lived. That commitment ended last weekend as Rebecca finally slipped into death. Though there were so many times it felt like a burden, Bill never stopped loving and caring. And now he still cannot stop. He doesn't know how or where or what it looks like. Grief has that depth of love in it that only lovers and parents and real risk-takers know.

I am proud and honored to be part of a family that so easily and openly expresses emotion, and who so fully risk loving. And with all of our words, we don't even come close to what we know each other to be feeling. I love you guys!