That place where there there is no sound...

I write when things get difficult, and so I have notebooks of scribbles from years of dealing with other peoples struggles, the kind that you shoulder whether you want to or not, and they then inspire your own struggles...to understand, to console, to offer hope...to help. Sometimes I go back through those books, and I read the notes, but mostly I don't. Today I accidentally found the words that I scribbled when I met a boy who barely had enough time to become a man before the demons caught up to him. Words have always helped. Not the rules that go along with them, I don't like those, no, just the feeling of scribbling them, of typing them, or of how they sound together...sometimes even how they look beside one another. Some people like numbers or sounds. I like words. They almost always make sense when other things don't.

Today I found these words from three years ago...about a boy I'd just met, a boy no longer with us. I share them here because the sharing feels good when everything else just feels bad, and because it feels important that they're out in the world filling the space that he's left. I struggled to find a way to honour someone who didn't honour himself, and that's when the words came...and the only way to make them honourable is to show them to others.

They looked better on paper, in messy cursive, but here they are nonetheless...

"Why do this," she said...a Mom, and justified in her concern for her son. Addiction is difficult to be anchored to, to be helplessly tied to. "Because it's the right thing to do," he said, "it's what he deserves, I think," he added. Still, nothing...no response, just quiet hesitation. "I think it's important just to be there," he urged, "to accept the discomfort of the situation, to lean into the helplessness and just choose to be there," he insisted. "That matters, doesn't it? It matters that I'm there when he can finally see, when he finally looks up and hopes that he recognizes something that doesn't remind him of what hurts. Don't you think?" The question was like heat lightning shooting across an empty sky. She blinked, and tried to speak but she struggled against the tears. Not unlike the storm that follows the lightning, when the sky opens up and begins to pour, her face darkened and something powerful pushed itself into that calm, quiet place. Her shoulders shuddered and she tried to restrain the deluge. It was no use. Her heart burst open like the sky and the tears flooded her flushed cheeks. "Thank you," she sputtered, "thank you so much." Then there was silence because in that place where truth and beauty intersect there is no sound. Where grace meets dignity there is often only the subdued silence of understanding. There was magic in that space between people he believed, and in that gentle moment he was certain that he was right. There...that feels better.