the words to describe what it was

I try to explain to him what it means and how it feels, and while I’m talking I wonder whether those two things are the same.

Imagine that you speak a language that only one other person in the world speaks. You don’t even think about it as a language – it’s just the world you inhabit together. One day you wake up and that person is gone, and that means that your language is gone, as if it never existed. You can’t capture or call it, and words start to fade from the pages of your memory. People tell you – there are other languages in the world. Losing this language – why, that gives you the opportunity to learn one of these other languages instead! It’s true, you can learn another language – but it won’t be the language that you’ve lost, and your tongue will still be silenced. The worst knowledge of all, though, is that as the language leaves you like rain soaking back into the earth, you’re also losing the memory of the person that you spoke it with, the one person who shared that world with you.

I watch his face to see if he understands, but it long ago ceased to matter. I’m dreaming of words that I will never hear again, and inside I weep for the voice that is gone forever.