all we couldn't speak

I went "back home" last weekend for the funeral of my (step)grandfather, and wasn't surprised to see all the long-lost family members trickling through the doorway and standing in little huddles throughout my grandma's house. There were aunts and uncles and cousins and neices and nephews, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, and we all knew each other.

Sort of.

What surprised me was that the bottle-neck didn't start at the front door, even as all those people shuffled their way past the tight little entryway; it started on our tongues. I stood before two uncles of mine, brothers, whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years and hadn't spent appreciable time with, if ever, since my childhood. One I had memories with, one I didn't, but a casual observer would have thought that we were all strangers, searching for some spark with which to light the way of our dimly familiar relationships. That spark just didn't come in time, for most of us.

We stood there, drenched in the enormity of a loss that no one can really ever comprehend, grown by years of experience, worn by grief and triumph, having been transformed in our own ways by the events of our smallish lifetimes.

You'd think we'd have a thing or two to say about that.

But no. Even when we meet people we think about all the time, people who helped shape our view of the world, people who knew us well in our younger days, we fall silent and grope spastically for some meaningful thing to say. That hard eggshell doesn't even begin to crack with talk of the weather, or of the kids, or of our doing-fine-and-keeping-busyness. All of our career-talk and pleasantries bounce right off, and when the clock has ticked away on that small, precious hour of opportunity before we pass out of each other's lives again for God-knows-how-long-or-maybe-forever, all those words that couldn't come out stay bottled up, more potent and passionate and concentrated than ever before. That's how it is with me, at least.

So I couldn't look my uncle in the eye, or even shuffle my feet and cast a bashful downward glance, and let him know that I'm finding my voice as an artist, and that there were a few years when I was a child that his artist's voice made me aware that I might have one, too. I couldn't tell him that my oldest son might someday play the guitar like him, or that I cried the day that Dan Fogelberg died because I remembered my uncle singing "The Long Way" with my mother when I was barely old enough to understand the words, much less the meanings. I couldn't tell him that I saw the grief of grandpa Euel's death etched on his suddenly-serious face and that I understood the bond I saw there. I couldn't. I wish I could have. And I wish I could have told him that he's always held a special space in my heart where I keep my collection of heroes from over the years, all the formative faces, calloused hands and voices of wisdom that have helped me along the way.

I think I'm going to have to find a way to unstop that bottle-neck next time, at least slowly, before the chance is gone and all I couldn't speak becomes all I never did.

--Teri.