“No words of hate, revenge or gall...her silent tears would say it all.” -- Silent Tears, by Craig Courtney
Tragedy often strikes without warning, and in the emotional flood that follows we often struggle to find adequate expressions for our storm of feelings. “I’m sorry for your loss” becomes trite to the broken heart. And what words can even approach the overwhelming pain that calamity brings?
The opening quote is from a song about a mother whose son is brutally executed by the government before her eyes, and she can do nothing to stop the unfolding scene. The expression of her grief in this heart-rending situation is poignant: she doesn’t say a word, for what words could suffice? No insults or threats of reprisal could change what is happening, no revenge or anger could return him to life, and certainly no words exist to convey the piercing depth of her pain. When words are not enough, what can impart such anguish?
Silence.
To remain silent is to accept that the felt emotion is beyond words. Words inherently limit our experiences, for language exists to describe our world. But when our experience surpasses our pre-catalogued array of human emotions, how can we communicate? We could invent a word, perhaps. But it would still be foreign to those around us, and thus we would continue in isolation, cut off from society by our suffering. But silence recognizes that there is a hole, a blank which can be filled by no word. And silence allows that emptiness to dwell in one’s heart and one’s mind, thereby respecting the emotion’s depth and extent much more than a verbal description ever can.
When someone close to you grieves, the same idea applies. Do not diminish his experience by trying to describe it, or worse yet relate it back to yourself. If he wants to talk, then be silent and listen to the outpouring of his feelings. If she does not want to talk, then be silent, and hold her close.
Be silent, and cry with him.
Be silent, and look through photos with her.
Be silent, and play golf with him.
Americans especially have a difficult time with this; to us, silence feels like ignoring the elephant in the room. But many times silence will bring the elephant to the forefront of everyone’s attention, allowing all involved to reconcile its existence in relationship to theirs.
I saw a Japanese movie once, of which I remember almost nothing. But there is one scene which I remember clearly: an elderly woman and her childhood friend, both survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, visit each other on the anniversary of the bombings. They sit in an empty room, facing each other and saying nothing for hours. One woman’s grandchildren are in the house, and a younger one asks an older one why the women do not speak. The older grandchild replies, “What could be said?”
