February 2006I received a valentine from my son today. A small enough event. Mothers all over the world were remembered that way, though perhaps the experience for most was not quite the same as it was this time for me.I studied the signature for evidence of Peter’s own hand, wanting it to be, wanting it not to be. Because my son, young in years, is old in reality. Through illness, his life, his mind, the most basic kinds of control of his body are slipping away. And while I knew that his dear wife would have bought the card, addressed it, made sure it would be mailed at the right time, nonetheless, I paused long over the wavery signature . . . Love you, Peter. Was it possible? Could he still sign his name? Even with another hand guiding his?In my deepest heart I don’t want it to be possible. I don’t want to think of my son struggling to the surface to perform this small task then being caught there, however briefly, to understand where he is. Away from his wife and three little boys, away from his parents and sister, away from his many friends, away from all the satisfactions and responsibilities of his adult life. Alone and shut away.And still I want the card, the thought that is in the card, to be from him.Peter was practically born talking. When he was nine months old, he spoke in paragraphs. No words yet, of course, but all the inflections, the hand gestures, the solemn intent to communicate. At two he talked until my head ached. In junior high, he got himself into trouble with other boys by constantly using words they didn’t know. In his late thirties he began pausing in the middle of an account to say something like, “Small animal . . . black, white stripe.” And his listener would say, “skunk.” And he would say, “Yeah,” and go on. Now, if I try to talk to him on the phone, we mostly sit in silence. Words no longer belong to him.He can’t remember the names of his three boys. When asked in the hall of the nursing home to introduce his wife, he can think neither of her name, Katy, nor of the word for what she is to him, wife. But he knows she is there. He knows to the bottom of his soul.The day will come, we all understand, when he will not know even this. For now, he has lost mostly the words.I was born into a world of words. Words have been, not just a convenient tool for letting the world know who I am, what I want, what I think, they have been my very life. Peter once had a writer’s mind, a writer’s love of words, an appreciation for the sound of them, for the places they could take his listeners, for the way he could use them to present himself to the world. To imagine Peter’s life without language is to begin to imagine death.Words soothe me when I am sad, they create a bond with those who want to hear, they even make meaning when there was none.Love you, Peter.I sent my son a valentine, too, of course. I chose a large, glossy, red heart, something that could be put up on his wall to remind him, completely without words, that he, too, is loved.