The language of care

The language of care must trace its origin to the dialect of consoling. Empathetic words, hand-picked and woven together with myriad emotions to bring comfort; both momentarily and for a lifetime. The only challenge is who knows its original scripture? Where does one learn to pacify not pity? To ease and not escalate a suffering? To aid, not aggravate grief?

In all the days since dad was admitted in the hospital, I have been observing each visitor who has come to see him or the other patients around. Even though people have the best of intentions, almost no one seems to be fluent in the language of sharing someone’s pain, expressing their care or concern or in bringing solace to a sorrow-ridden heart of a caretaker or a patient. Everyone is an apprentice in this craft.

Deep sighs, droopy shoulders, lowered eyes, awkward silences often punctuate what people have to say or how they say it. Some visitors are apologetic, about the mishap, to the point that it adds a layer of pain to the existing despair. Some make it all about themselves. They trump the reality with nostalgia filled stories; narrating incidents where something more grave had happened to them or someone they knew. Some are in revolving denial. Some sincerely exaggerate.

The art of consoling is interrupted by not what has happened but what could and should have. People like to repeat explicitly how the horror is a blessing because it prevented a more horrendous affair that was due. As if, embroiled in a gambling game of fate and misery, pain is in a self-arranged competition to outdo itself.

Isn’t it interesting that growing up, our learning circles, either at school or at home, skip the syllabus of emotional expression? We are not taught, by mistake or by design, what to say to someone who just experienced loss. How to care for someone without burdening them with our feelings? How to hold space for someone’s agony and still not be consumed by it? Even if they did, would it still apply like the certainty of a mathematical formula or the coordinates of a geography map?

The vocabulary of comfort is a complex one. Its definitions are subjective and it’s synonyms obscure. It requires for our bodies to become its tongue, for our being to mouth its chime. The vocal fold of our emotion vibrates and collides with our intention box before it produces any sound. It listens when it speaks.

I have come to learn that the language of care is perhaps the only language that is born as we speak it. We neither inherit it nor do we hand-it-down. It’s history and it’s future are in the now of solace. It’s eloquence is achieved in expressing. The more we attempt to care the more articulate we become. For we are both—It’s guardian & it’s graveyard.