Hearing More Than Words

It was one of those in-between moments. I had just finished one thing. Another thing was coming up close. My timing though was off, so I had to stop and wait. As I sat there quietly, I honed in on a nearby conversation. The participants were a mother and a son. When I heard the son’s voice I understood I had known them both a number of years.

I could not quite make out what the mother was saying, her voice lost in the physical distance between me and the two of them. Still, she asked her son something. Her son’s voice was strong and clear. It put that same distance that quieted her words to shame. He replied to her question indicating that the incident she asked about had been three years earlier. Again, in a voice that was only a whisper to me, she asked her son another question. He then told her an age several years above ninety. He then added “the two of you were the same age.” He topped this off by telling his mother her age now.

A few seconds of quiet filled in the space. She asked her son another question, again, one I could not understand through the distance. The son then listed a number of ailments his father had suffered through. When he finished, he circled around to point out a couple of ailments in particular that seemed to have been troublesome to his father, his mother’s husband.

Then, my wait was over. The next thing on my agenda was ready.

I have thought a lot about those couple of minutes since then. In today’s world, I could see some, and I fear the number is growing larger, who would make fun of this conversation with some concluding how someone who could not remember her own husband of many years was no longer useful to have around. I can’t comprehend how anyone could feel that way but I understand the gods of media and politics influence some people to embrace some very strange things that beyond the surface are much more complicated than they are convenient.

While I only heard one side of the conversation, I heard more than words. I heard a mother, worn out from the hard-work-never-a-day-off-of-family life, reaching out to remember some of those days. She likely thinks of them as the best days, the I’d-go-back-if-I-could days. I heard a son, patient, yet honest, give the answers he knows as only part of the story of his life with these two people. Now one of these two people is gone and the other holds tightly to memories fading into a hazy maze of age. Meanwhile, he must feel a certain resignation that for all the good times stored in memory that the fact of the matter these days is that this is the best it gets now.

I heard more though. What I really heard was the sound of love. Easy but hard. Ragged but right. Tender but tough. Ongoing, never-ending. In today’s world, I would think we could benefit from hearing more about that kind of love than most of the other stuff that drowns it out through distance and time. Then again, that might mean we take the time and make the effort to shut our own mouths so we can listen to voices other than our own.