Words Never Said

For a long time, I wondered about the last words we never shared just before he died. I was driving home when he collapsed in the garage with heart failure after sending our two young children off to do their chores. He never regained consciousness. I said my last words to his empty body after I turned off the machines later that night.

I would often find myself lost in thought about what we would have said to each other had I came home in time. I had no idea what it was like for him in those urgent moments, knowing that they would be his last here on earth. He knew what was coming. He must have had a lot on his mind.

I was offered advice to imagine these moments and call up what I think he would say. Let his message come to me. Or go to a medium and ask him. Many have experienced sudden loss and have tried a lot of ways to find peace. However, none of these were for me. All carry the same faulty assumption: that I could truly find words that were never uttered. None of these options could bring me back in time to when Gage was alive in the moments when he knew he was dying. It couldn’t be recreated because it was gone and I wasn’t there. It never happened.

But what I could do is reflect on the man I knew and still impossibly love, though he is no longer in this world with me. Countless times I’d called up memories or considered what he would say about a situation. His presence could be so strong that it would take my breath away. Maybe my love for him carried all the energy needed to keep him as close as he could be now. This had to be enough because I would never hear his goodbye. I couldn’t wish for anything more. And more importantly, I couldn’t let this hold me back, thinking that I was missing some critical message.

Finally it came to me. I should just love him. And through my love for him, gain closure for a life well lived. Let him be free. Let myself be free in this world right now and forever more. This is what he’d want. I would disappoint him if I clung to a false hope that he had more to tell me that I didn’t already know. I couldn’t hold my breath waiting for something that would not ever come. For words that never existed. I couldn’t wish for words that were never there, because they won’t change a thing in how I live today. He would want me to be free of that.

Since that day, I try to listen to my own truth, knowing that some of that message is mixed with his own. We are still connected in our love somehow, so he seeps in at times when I really need him. That’s why it doesn’t matter what we would have said to each other that day. I found something of him that is stronger than any words never said.