Wordless Communication

How does one share a feeling? I suppose you could ask your dog.  When she (or he) gets all excited and joyous about seeing you, knowing you will take her (or him) for a walk, isn’t that a way of telling you what they feel?

Might also be familiarity. As the days and years pass, we somehow know what the other person is feeling.  Most mornings I used to cross paths with a couple walking their aged black dog and we exchanged smiles, a wordless awareness of what we were thinking. I knew them since his father had been my landlord when I had the shop – a true gentleman of the old school who apologized when he had to raise my rent. Several weeks, or a month or more, passed and I realized I hadn’t seen them recently. Suddenly, there was a death notice on the bulletin boards that serve as local newspapers. It simply gave a name and said “a good man who has returned home”. No indication of age or where or when the final obsequies were to be held.

I had thought of writing her but never did, although I saw her occasionally from a distance. Then one day on my walk there she was, sitting with a friend outside a wine bar along the street.  I stopped – Can I give you a hug? I asked. She smiled, got up, came over to me and we hugged at length.  Words weren’t required, it was all in that incredible hug that has left me with a warm feeling every time I think of it. She knew what I wanted to tell her.