Archive for April, 2007
I write. I write a lot. Some of it ends up here, a little over at Candied Pop, and a sprinkling on various boards and blogs. Most of my writing sits in little files that may or may not be opened again but are obsessively backed up and worried about in that back of the head sort of itch. For all that writing, though, I do not think that I am very good with words.
When I string them together it never seems quite right, the meaning feels elusive, that I am only approximating what I truly want to say. So, more often or not, stand motionless, paralyzed because I cannot find a combination of words that wrap up a knot of complex emotions into an easy to understand and sincere package.
One of my oldest and closest friends lost her husband this week to a long battle with cancer. I’m sitting here wanting to cry, feeling that balloon in my chest rising up to my throat but I cannot. I want to cry for her. I want to cry for his children. Nothing comes. The same when I called to offer condolences.
For all my writing and thinking, whgen it came time to offer words of support my throat dried, my eyes burned, and all I could croak out was a feeble, “I am so sorry.” I couldn’t find a way to express myself, to say what I felt. I sat on the other end of the phone biting my lip, cowardly.
Maybe it is just as well that words failed me at that moment. She does not need the additional burden of my grief or anyone else’s, she has enough of her own to carry. Before my silence stretched into a gravity of its own to pull down on the conversation I told her that we love her, that she is a sister to me, and that we would do anything for her, whatever and whenever.
Maybe that was the right thing to say, I don’t know.
