No words?

It seems to be a thing these days to say, "There are no words" and then to trail off, or shake one's head, mouth slightly open, but with nothing to say.

If it is a thing, a catch-all polite phrase from the second decade of the 21st century, I reject it. And yet a few days ago I found myself starting to type "There are no words ... " in a Facebook message, replying to someone telling me about a mother and father who had recently joined the "I've Lost a Child" club--the club of which I, too, am a member. (No officers, no seniority rankings, no membership records, no secret handshake. Just this one awful shared fact.)

"There are no words," I typed, slowly and deliberately. I had no useful advice about getting through life's dark moments, no sure-fire scripture that comforts me. And I don't like rants about grieving, or truisms about carrying love for this child in your heart for the rest of your life.

But "no words" was not a satisfactory choice either. And a Facebook message was too small a box in which to draft an alternative. I clicked on the bookmark for The Perverse Lutheran and the link to start a new post and faced a much bigger space with no words.  The trouble was not so much with finding them, but with liking the ones I found and leaving them alone once I had typed them on the screen. This post sat as a draft for more than a week.

There must be words. What are we without them? What else can we balance on, walk with, reach toward, but explanations that use words?

Words help. Years ago when my husband wandered off into dementia, my kids and I talked about Dad's delusions and about how we felt--angry, helpless, sad, frustrated, resigned, spooked. We put words to things as best we could. Words made uncomfortable feelings into things of substance.