A Brief Thought on Language, and Grief

I was thinking today about the Spanish phrase, “Mi más sentido pésame”, which, translated into English, means, “My deepest condolences”. However, as anyone who has studied any language can attest, you cannot truly translate one language directly to another; something is always lost, some subtle difference or conveyance is missing if you move words from one language to another. Some things are truly expressed most adequately in the words of a particular language. My only real knowledge of this extends to the English and Spanish languages, but I have heard examples of others.

The reason that the particular phrase here was on my mind was because a couple of dear friends whom I only converse with in Spanish had said it to me recently. The funny thing was that I had been trying to recall the phrase, as I found it both particularly beautiful and adequate.

The verb “pesar”, in Spanish, means both “to weigh”, “to be heavy”, or “to carry weight”. “Me pesa” means “it weighs on me”. I think this makes a lot of sense. Initially, I felt that the best way to describe a very recent grief was the sensation of moving through water in daily life. So slow. So devoid of energy. So heavy.

Me pesa.

Mi más sentido pésame.

We are allowed these moments, and all others, during the process of grief. It is a strange and unpredictable animal. I shall take it one day at a time.