She Died Before I Could Ask Her

You were going to ask her in the spring.

That was the plan and it was a real plan. You had even worked out what you would ask her first, which was what she called the thing her mother used to make at Christmas, because you had never known the word for it and had been saying the English one your whole life.

And she went in February.

And now you are sitting with a book you bought in March, learning words out of it, and every single one of them is the wrong version. They are the book words. They are not her words, and there is no longer any way to find out what her words were.

Let me say the thing underneath it, because I do not think you have said it out loud to anybody.

It is not really about the language.

The language is where the grief has gone to live, because grief has to live somewhere, and this is the part of it that still has a task attached. Every word you learn is a small collision with the fact that you are doing it alone and you did not have to be.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You have a real grief and you also have a regret sitting inside it, and the regret is the part that has no floor.

So I am not going to tell you she would be pleased that you are learning it. She might well have been and I cannot know, and a comfortable guess about a woman I never met is not worth your time. And I am not going to tell you there was no way to know. You know what you were doing, which was waiting until spring, and being told it was unforeseeable does not sit right with somebody honest.

What I can do is show you a woman who said this out loud to Jesus and was not corrected.

Lord, if thou hadst been here

There is a moment on a road outside Bethany where a grieving woman says the hardest possible thing directly to Jesus.

Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. (John 11:21, King James Version)

If thou hadst been here.

That is a woman saying out loud that it did not have to be this way. It is one step from an accusation and everybody standing on that road would have heard it as one, and she says it to his face before she says anything else.

You have permission to say out loud that it did not have to be this way, and naming what could have been different has never once been a complaint God refused. John 11:21 lets a woman open with that exact sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with somebody learning a dead woman's language out of a book.

Now look at what happens next, which is what makes this passage worth anything at all.

He does not correct her. There is no rebuke. There is no explanation of how the timing was actually right, and there is no reminder that she ought to trust the plan. The text simply moves on to the next thing he says to her, and her sentence is left standing.

You were never going to be corrected for saying the true thing, and a hard sentence spoken to God has never once been treated as an offense. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives a sentence like that without adjusting it, and John 11:21 leaves Martha's words standing exactly as she said them.

And here is the third thing, which is the detail that matters most for February.

He wept. A few verses later, in front of everybody, with the outcome already known to him, he wept anyway. Which means the coming resolution did not cancel the grief and was never meant to.

You have never once been asked to be finished with this in order to carry on, and a grief still fully intact has never once disqualified anybody from the next thing they do. John 11:21 stands inside a chapter where Jesus weeps knowing what comes next, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman turning over a book she bought in March.

The book words are not the wrong words

Here is the practical half, and it is about what you actually lost and what you did not.

You did not lose the language. That is the first thing, and it is worth separating carefully from what you did lose, because the two have been fused since February and they are not the same.

The language is still there. It is spoken by a great many people and there are books and recordings and relatives, and every word in it is still available to anybody who goes and gets it.

What you lost was her particular version of it. Her words for things. The one she used at Christmas. That loss is genuine and it is not recoverable and I am not going to pretend it is.

You have lost something real and specific rather than the whole of it, and a version that is gone has never once taken the language with it. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has fused two losses into one since February, and John 11:21 lets a grieving woman say out loud what did not have to happen.

Now here is the thing about the book words, which have been feeling like a consolation prize.

They are not a lesser version. They are the same language, and four hundred of them is enough to talk to her sister, who is eighty one and still here, and who has most of the words your grandmother had because they grew up in the same house.

The person who can give you her words is alive. You have been treating this as a closed archive and there is a woman in it.

You have somebody still living who holds most of what you thought was gone, and a door that is still open has never once been the same as a door that closed in February. John 11:21 is spoken on a road where something is about to happen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows which of your relatives still has those words.

And here is the thing about the regret, said plainly, because it is not going to be argued away.

You waited until spring and spring did not come in time. That is true and it will stay true, and nothing in this article is going to make it untrue.

What it does not have to become is the reason you stop. The regret can sit in the room while you learn. It does not require an answer before you open the book, and it will not be resolved by being carried for another six months.

You are allowed to carry the regret and learn the language in the same season, and an unresolved thing has never once had to be settled before the next word goes in. The Spirit of God is the one who weeps beside somebody knowing exactly what comes next, and the written word never once corrects a woman for saying it did not have to be this way.

One word, from somebody still here

So here is the assignment, and it is aimed at the person who is still in the room.

Learn one word your family would have used and say it to somebody in the family.

Go to her sister. Or whoever is left from that generation. Call her, or go and sit with her, and ask her one thing.

Ask her what her mother used to call the thing they made at Christmas. That is the question you had ready for your grandmother. It is still a good question and there is still somebody to ask.

You have a question already prepared and somebody alive to ask it, and a question that lost its first hearer has never once stopped being a good question. John 11:21 is said on a road where the next thing has not happened yet, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman picking up a phone to her great aunt.

And here is what to expect, and you should be ready because it will go both ways.

She will probably cry. You will probably cry. And then she will tell you the word, and she will very likely tell you three other things about her sister that nobody has ever told you, because she has been carrying them and nobody has asked.

That is not a burden on an old woman. That is the first afternoon in two years where somebody wanted what only she has. Then say the word back to her, out loud, badly, and stop. One word is the assignment, and grief this size is worth saying out loud to a pastor you trust or somebody qualified to sit with it, and that is a separate errand from this one.

You have permission to take one word and cry and stop, and one word carried out of that afternoon has never once been a small thing to bring home. The Spirit of God is the one in the room when two women cry over a Christmas dish, and John 11:21 leaves the hardest sentence standing without one word of correction.