Words said and unsaid

My father and I do not often say the words “I love you” to one another. He is British and despite forty years stateside, I think frequent pronouncements of deep emotion still make him a bit uncomfortable. My mother, while also British, emotes out of every pore. No phone call is complete without saying it at least four times each.

In recent years, my dad’s mortality has been a little closer to the forefront of all our minds. While these moments have increased the frequency of repeating those three little words, more often my dad and I say “I love you” through gallows humor.

Two years ago, I stayed with my parents for a few days while my dad had surgery. Just before walking out the door to leave, he and I had this exchange:

Me: Well Dad, this was fun. Let’s NOT do it again soon?

Dad: Right, yes. Shall we make it the heart next time?

Me: Uh, maybe we should put that one off for a bit.

Dad: Yes, right. Probably best to wait on that one.

Me: Yes, but let’s not wait so long as to make it unnecessary.

I guess that is one way to tell a hemophiliac with a wee heart problem that you really don’t want him to die–neither on the operating table nor before he has the chance to get there.

Just a few weeks ago, when my parents called to tell me that my dad’s bladder cancer had returned, I fixated on the two words that my mother used to describe it: superficial and aggressive. When she handed the phone over to my dad, I couldn’t help but congratulate him for having cheerleader cancer. “Cheerleader cancer?” he asked, slightly confused. When I repeated back, “Yes, superficial but aggressive,” he laughed out loud. I knew he’d appreciated it when I heard him make the crack to my mom while handing the phone back to her. My mother first thanked me for making him laugh, and then roundly reprimanded me for making light of the situation.

The scolding wasn’t strictly necessary. I know that this is serious. We’ve been through this before, so I know that the coming months will involve waiting around to heal from surgery, and then weeks of treatment, and then waiting around to see if it worked. In that moment, though, I knew that my dad wanted me to have the facts but really didn’t want to talk about it. So I did what he and I do—we talked about it, by not talking about it.

Declarations of love are a tricky business. I’ve never been the girl who nonchalantly throws around the words, “I love you.” A modicum of caution has always seemed important: When it comes to telling someone that you love them, you can’t un-say it later. So are you really sure? I still remember how terrified I was to say those words for the first time without any assurance that I would be hearing it back. I know what it is like, too, for the words to come tumbling out in a moment of glee, when it is the most natural thing to say—a pure, joyful statement of fact. And obviously, with my dad, I know how you can say it without using the actual words themselves.

Unfortunately, there have been times I feel like I’ve said it so much that it has become robotic, like the “buh bye now” of a flight attendant standing at the cabin door. Tossing it out there mindlessly can be almost as bad as realizing it isn’t true just as the words are passing through your lips.

I guess, in a lot of ways, it comes down to intent. When I don’t say the words to my dad too often, my intent is to keep from making him uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t feel it, but that I suspect he will feel squirmy if I go on too long. I hold off the gooey declarations for his sake, not mine. When I tell my daughter that I love her multiple times a day, it is because I want my love for her to be a landed fact—an intractable reality—in her life. (My own mother did this for me, and despite the horror of puberty and high school and feeling like an awkward towering gargoyle for many of my formative years, the fact that I was loved in my own home was never in doubt.) In both of these scenarios, the meaning is the same whether or not the words match up.

So this is when that old familiar clang of dissonance ring in my brain. I assign so much value to the words and yet I know that the words themselves have very little intrinsic meaning without the heart behind them. And yet I prize them and am careful not to misuse them. But I know, too, that my actions say so much more than my mouth ever does. So does it really matter? Yes! No! Yes!

Ever since reading The Little Prince, I have always had a soft spot for his assertion: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Perhaps in my case, it is only with the heart that I speak rightly. What is essential is impossible to capture with words.

But oh how I do keep trying.

Advertisement