WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WORDS FALL AWAY?
My mother died early on Christmas morning. I received the call from her care home at 2:00 a.m. and rushed to her side, where I had spent most of the previous week. Her body was still warm to my touch when I arrived, and I sat beside her for hours, until the sun rose on a blisteringly beautiful blue-sky day, and the undertaker took her away.
One of the great gifts of this past five months is the physical closeness that developed between my mother and me. As her language skills dwindled, and her mind became increasingly confused, touch helped. We held hands, I rubbed her back, put my arms around her, showered kisses on her head and cheeks. I smoothed cream into her dry skin.
Touch was intimacy, a way of showing love, when words no longer held much potency. But it was more than physical closeness too.
I realized that if I paused and took a deep breath before entering the care home each day, clearing away my anxieties and becoming more fully present in my body, then my visit would likely go well. Words, in the end, just complicated things. Instead we “spoke” through our eyes, our touch, our laughter. We sang and chair-danced; we made faces.
In many ways, communicating with my mother through touch and presence, came naturally to me. For years now, I have approached the natural world in a similar way. I walk quietly, hold my chatter, especially the internal variety, and allow my fingers to explore the textures of stone, bark and grass. I gaze long and lovingly at trees.
The poet Rilke wrote, “Since I’ve learned to be silent, everything has come closer to me.”
Sitting wordlessly in the forest, deer and squirrel, and nuthatch emerge. So, too, those surprising leaps of insight that can shift a life. In the quiet, we aren’t just open to perceive but to receive.
There were days, in the care home, when I knew exactly what my mother was trying to tell me, even as her words failed her. I’d softly speak what I thought she meant, and I’d see her relax. Yes, I am understood.
Because language was less accessible to my mother, I was reminded that language is sacred. Every sentence that emerged from her, every jumbled phrase, were as gifts. But I also learned that there are a thousand ways to speak with one another—and each is important.
Perhaps, after all, language carries more healing medicine when rooted in moments of quiet intimacy where skin touches skin, hands touch bark and soil. I like to think so.
For now, I miss my mother. The smell of her. How her hair always felt soft and silky beneath my hand. Her so-bright smile. There are things about her, for which I have no words. And so I walk out my door, the keen wind on my cheeks, the earth beneath my feet.
I say nothing. And in return, the world speaks comfort to me in myriad, glorious, wordless ways.
