There Are Moments in Life Beyond Language

By Nicole Albarelli

There are moments in life that live beyond language. Watching someone die is one of them. Watching a parent die is something else again. It is impossible not to see both the past and the future all at once. A mystical mirror of sorts. A looking glass.

It's a familiar room. I've been here before.

When you squeeze past the selfish desires of expectation and simply sit with the process, the witnessing becomes a strange and beautiful doorway. It opens deep in the muscles that have been clenching, in the parts of the body that grip so tightly to this world and all its meanings. A cinematic reel of feelings and photographs you haven't unearthed in years.

You ask for answers, for signs, for hidden messages. You replay every sentence as if trying to solve a mystery.

Loneliness swims in now and then and overwhelms. Yet still eager to feel the freedom that might come after.

I'm noticing everything again. A calm, quiet noticing. The leaves, the birds, the way the breath pauses. The way the clouds glide, the skin warms and the wind cools. 

And the words… the words are just trying to fill the space. They always have.