Today’s about questions. Some questions are obvious with others irrelevant and perhaps even irreverent. Most with conjectures that partially fill a bucket of understanding, but most sit as incomplete responses without answers: words piled up and just sitting next to each other.
I begin each day writing to you, but you died and can’t write back. Why? My writing is made public, to be read by all. Why not just keep them private for me to be with me? What can words do to help peek into the purpose and soul of life? How can words be strung together to provide even a glimmer of understanding? Can these words be helpful to others?
I write about all things, small and large, mostly small. The little things of life that often go past recognition. Mostly ignored and brushed aside, not stored for interpretation: nuances having nothing to do with the meaning of life. But they do. Why ignore this small stuff with so much delightful variation and color? The way people use words in conversation. The questions people ask and the conjectures they make for reasoning on purpose and understanding. The looks of people: confirming, embellishing, contesting, remolding meaning.
We’ve met many people these past two months, so caring and loving in their words. They’ve written many cards of consolation after your death that begin with ‘words cannot express’… They’re right and yet I swim with words throughout the night. Words with you in the center and compelled to be placed on paper, now replaced by a screen. Words nevertheless. Why?
What can we do to tell people how important their care and love has been? Many we’ll never see again. Some know our journey well, having lost a loved one far too early. How did they take this journey? What makes it possible to live with the contradiction of having such memories of a life well lived, now left in a heap. What words do they use?
Your death seems to be present in every moment, quietly in the background. How can we make your death turn to your life and not be so quiet, not in the background? How can words be used to turn your death into the celebration of life as it was on September 9? The celebration carried through words spoken by family, classmates, teachers, and friends. How can we can we keep the celebration alive?
We want these questions to settle. Enlighten. Allow us to move on with some understanding that your brief life with us was for a reason. Understood through words but with questions that defy answers at least for now. We love you so much buddy. Words cannot express…
JT