Last Words

We've all been there, wanting to have the last word in an argument. It's an ancient drive... ears perked up, to catch even an in-breath in preparation for a sound. Your bones moving without your bidding, and your voice is projecting without even a plan for the sound they'll make as they exit your mouth. It usually comes out something like, "Yeah, huh!"

I've read plenty of books, listened to plenty of teachers, watched videos upon videos and sat silent with only myself for company for two full weeks. A large focus of that work is building the capability of letting things go. Letting thoughts come and go without having to follow a story. To be able to abide the impermanence of life with equanimity and grace. I've made big strides with some things I've wanted to change - I'm more accepting of myself, I can quite often not internalize stress, and I more rarely fly into a murderous rage when I hear someone chewing. (That last one's huge...if you know me, you know that one.)

Yet, I still have that drive to be the last to utter a sound during an argument sometimes. It's really an odd compunction. As it almost always ensures, at least in terms of appearance, I've lost that argument - whether I'm right or wrong. I'm not sure that's a hard and fast rule - it's just how it feels when "yeah, huh" or it's equivalent manages to sneak past my better judgement.

I do wonder where that comes from. What's behind that drive? To this day, I don't recall a single one of those victorious moments. I don't remember what it was I felt so passionately about. What begged, pleaded, demanded to have the last say. I don't remember a single last word I've ever had. Months - heck, days - go by and mostly forgotten is whatever stupid trivial thing it was that pulled on my roots, insisting to be the final one with something to say.

But I've been thinking more about the exact opposite, lately. There's still such a primal drive with this one - deeper and more profound than I'm sure I can even comprehend right now. When the perk of your ear is set all the way to record. When your entire being hollows out to catch the faintest sound. When you'd given anything to hear the last words - inscribing them across your soul, a very brand of undying love.

I experience the most gentle form of this, fairly often. Looking through old pictures of my son, my heart recalls the exact moment it was taken - indeed she reads from the inscription to conjure the moment - The feel of his teeny hand in mine and that mischievous look in his eyes, telling me he thought he'd gotten one over on me. It's a silly little trait that 100% comes from his father...I was never so mischievous (cue mischievous eye twinkle). I'm transported to a time when he spoke like a pixie, and I? Well, I was the most magical being on the planet, and I possessed the answer to all the mysteries under the sun...literally, there wasn't anything I didn't know.

But the melancholy to hear the voices of those who we can no longer hear is its own unique pain. I was acquainted with death fairly early in life (that is for a whole other time - don't worry, it's nothing violent or salacious - just more than I want to cover right now). Sometimes this melancholy feels like wondering what their voice would sound like at this age, or how they would have grown into adulthood. Sometimes it feels like a knowing laugh, because their reaction to whatever just happened was so sure, you could almost hear it - almost.

There are so many shades to this bittersweetness that is being human -this work of accepting impermanence. The shade I've been thinking about most lately though is a deeper, quieter, lonelier one. In fact, bittersweetness is a compliment this one hasn't earned. This one's not mine - not yet anyway. It belongs to a dear friend. I imagine it to feel like a hole in your soul, that somehow has physical weight. As if you now literally carry the person who no longer is here within that emptiness.

And from my experience missing those who have gone before us, I can only imagine that pull. The striving with your entire being to hear that voice again, knowing that no amount of hollowness can will into vibration the sound of a lost loved one. Only those inscriptions left deep within carry a specter of who was.

And it's there, deep in our core, in the place where undying love reigns that we find the true value of the last words. Much like everything in life, as a young person, we can often intuit value in a situation or meaning in an interaction. But it takes maturity, lived experience and some introspection to understand that while you understood the importance, you'd placed the value on the wrong side of the equation. There's no victory in having the last word. The victory is in being the honored one to have heard them. To be the keeper of those sacred moments and steward of that history.