January 27, 2017 - It's what the adjectives always knew

January is something I have never felt before. I think the English language failed us in choosing the word. Maybe the Greeks failed us too. And the French.  And the Germans. And the Latins, whoever they are (Ancient Rome - see, I paid attention in school, Ms. Waicus).  I have no idea. I don’t speak those languages. I’m your typical American, affluent barely in my own language, but I know I haven’t yet excavated the words for what I feel. Or maybe there are words that perfectly encompass all that I feel, but rather it’s the adjectives that give the words scope and grandeur that continue to let me down. The words start out perfect, for you think their meaning will suffice, but later as you apply them to your circumstance you find they do anything but justice to where you currently lie. It’s like the perfectly shaped frozen yogurt that is placed into your crispy chocolate waffle cone only to minutes later dribble its way into a sticky melted puddle onto the once shiny linoleum floor.  It started out great but ended up sloppy and failed.

"Sally, how are you?"

“Sad” seems perfectly appropriate on Day 1. Day 15 shows you “sad” is a ridiculous term to use. “Out of sorts” is reasonable to describe the night you climbed into bed with your shoes still on. “Out of sorts” in no way describes the current state of wondering thoughts that find you when you can’t sleep. “Grief”, as a word, is a catch all that really catches nothing. It’s simply a starting point that doesn’t even begin to describe ache that as time morphs leaves you breathless or even vomiting when you think of the events of that day.  These words, generic nouns of feeling, are pale in comparison to what is actually being felt. Would adjectives, carefully chosen and applied to the noun as taught in English 101, fix the language folly? “Great sadness.” “Profound Sadness.” “Heart breaking Sadness.”  “Terribly Out of Sorts.” “Prolonged Grief.” (It’s only been two weeks so I am wrong to use prolonged as of yet, but I have it here for illustration.) “Unbelievably Shocking.” Adjectives do in fact help as they certainly were intended to do. They quantify. They give depth. They color. They paint a scenery that the noun can't even begin to landscape. I have a cat. But is it a long haired cat? A short haired cat?  And then it is calico? It is striped? It is evil (as many cats are)? Or loving? Or playful? See "cat" alone tells you it only has claws. Or does it? Is it a declawed cat?  Is the cat yellow? Or grey? Or black? Is it a kitten? Or elderly? Maybe it is a hairless cat and I have fooled you all along. So how in the world can "Sad" tell you of my sadness? These simple nouns of emotion do this aftermath of tragedy a terrible injustice. The ice cream starts out perfectly placed and and as time goes on, it ends up on the shiny floor.  Adjectives (and my flowery, run-on, hard-to-follow-overwhelming sentences)...well, they help me, the one who processes life through words, find some sort of purpose in the up from down of all of this stuff stuck in my heart and head. It’s nothing unique to me, any one of you have experienced the dictionary’s mistake, this lack of finding the suitable word to describe the things you are feeling, but all of us will one day experience it in a new way for the first time after losing someone like Andy and all of you will be frustrated at the lack of suitable words to describe what you feel.

As I was sharing with a coworker/friend this week, not all of the emotions are “overwhelmingly downtrodden”. I am also “awkwardly amazed”, as it caught me off guard, at how some of the things I feel are “incredibly uplifting”. It’s as if all my emotions are now “overly amplified”. I would have predicted, had I been asked in foresight, that the world instead would have been dampened or softened by the “intense grief” and “sudden sadness”, but instead it’s as if the world is magnified through a looking glass and I see everything in a finer focus. Laughter is louder, love is more evident. Grace is more gracious…to name a few. Maybe that is God’s way of getting me through it. Or maybe that is His gift to balance it all out. Either way it simply makes it all just a little more doable. I'm relishing in these "amazing emotions" that were unexpected as it makes the "less enjoyable emotions" more easily endured.

Tragedy, as experienced in Andy's death, changes us all. Look at 9/11 where we all became more tolerant of our neighbors, grasping at each other for some sense of comradery, desperately searching to find a way to back to normal on the other side. We bonded together in love, resilience, and forgiveness, and formed a cohesive unit of us in the world. Maybe the smaller (larger for me individually) scale tragedy of Andy is doing a smaller (larger) version of that in me. I’m searching for normal and pulling at things around me to bring them back close. I’m traumatized by the immediate aftermath, as we all were in those early days of the towers, but just like then it's intermingled with the great things that come too. We wanted/want to have our loved ones near. We called/call each other a little more often. We felt/feel emotions more richly. We lived/live out the adjectives. “Heartbreaking Shock.” “Strange Thoughts.” “Epic Emotions.” “Intense Love.” “Forgiving Hearts.” “Abundant Grace.” “Profound Sadness”. Everything was/is heightened to a new level.  But as time went/goes on, while we all remained/remain changed, we found/find ourselves able to thrive again in the new scenery. So shall it be for those of us moving forward without Andy. We will thrive in the new scenery, not despite the profound loss, but because of the gain and clarity that can come in the experience, even when it feels like tragedy. 

The dictionary still lets us down. We don’t have optimal words to describe the emotions that have existed for centuries, (sad is still just sad, and grief is still just grief) but our understanding of each grows as our experiences do. When you ask me how I am doing, I'm still going to say "sad". It's the only word I have to offer you. But now when I say those words I will use, there is something underneath I'm not saying. It’s what the adjectives always knew but I never did. 






It began as a story of prophylactic mastectomy and became a smattering of everyday life. I write so I can remember. I write so I can advocate. But mostly, I write to overcome. 



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