Nothing Unsaid

     It was one of those moments that, in retrospect, leaves you naked and breathless. It was a moment that lacked the import of JFK’s assassination or the bombing of the World Trade Centers. It was a moment, nonetheless, like the others, that I shall always remember where I was and what I felt when I heard the news, the words. “We’ve been friends for so long, it’s not like there was anything left unsaid.”
     Her best friend had just passed away. Her comment was so casual, spoken without forethought that I do not think she realized the weight of its profoundness. To have walked beside someone, as a lover, a friend or as a family member and in absolute honesty be able to declare, “I have left nothing unsaid” is perhaps the summation of all spiritual quests. It transcends the literal translation of verbal communication and includes actions, presence, attentiveness and constancy.
     As I sit here, my tapping fingers are slowly wearing out the letters on the keyboard. Perhaps it is just a message for me and will not resonate with others. How does one write about leaving nothing unsaid? Have I come full circle again to the earlier post where frustration led me to Gabriel Oak’s quote? Can I unroll the scroll of my heart and speak their names in the same way? Will their names now bear the question of what is left unsaid? Alas, I am not so wise.
     When I look at you, fear not the concentration of my blue eyes. I am simply searching in yours what I have left unsaid. When I reach out to touch you, worry not that my hand may tremble or even linger just a moment. My energy, the force of life within me is speaking to you and asking what I have left unsaid. If you see me walk slower than normal do not assume the arthritis and my knees are cranky. The souls of my feet are speaking to the earth and asking what I have left unsaid. When I say ‘I love you’ it is the ‘you’ that you are, not what I need or wish you would be. I will not define you and risk a box that excludes and leaves something unsaid. And in my struggle to leave nothing unsaid, know that I am both saint and sinner, easily distracted and absent minded and my words may scale heights that my actions do not. My claim to imperfection will never go unsaid. Nor shall my cry for forgiveness and my zeal to begin again and leave nothing unsaid.