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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
In my home, my smartphone has a place on a side table in the living room, a place where I would keep a landline if I still had one. In the evening when it sounds and if I’m in earshot, I pick it up and look at the call display. If it’s someone I know, I usually answer. One night, the phone prodded me to pay attention to it. I checked it to see a text with a string of unusual emojis – a bento box, an anchor, a game console, a hiking boot. A friend had texted these pictograms, saying that she was playing around on her device. I had no idea there was an emoji for a hiking boot.
I limit my use of emojis. I love the written word. I love reading written words, writing words, and encouraging others to use words. I remember an interview actor Gary Oldman gave on playing Winston Churchill in the 2017 film The Darkest Hour. He said that renewed interest in the Second World War era had something to do with language, how it could rally a nation, and how today we live in an era of [expletive] emojis that reduces the power of oratory to “stupid symbols.”
My emoji vocabulary is sparse, a crescent moon and a puppy being the extent of it. Emojis are playful and a shortcut, but they have their place, as does my smartphone on the side table in my living room.
Until you receive a text from a sibling, notifying you that there’s been a family tragedy.
Until your heart is smashed.
Until words fail.
I phoned and spoke to my sister, and learned of my nephew’s suicide, the son of my other sister. My siblings are scattered across North America, and we don’t communicate often. I text occasionally, at holidays and birthdays, but I’m not in touch on a regular basis. News of this magnitude felt like a nuclear bomb had gone off in my family. I went to see the film Oppenheimer the next day, hoping the Trinity detonation scene would act as a catharsis.
Details of the suicide came in texts from my brother. My nephew’s mother and her husband were in another province at the time and drove 12 hours through the night to return. My brother reported all the gritty details through text; plus the tentative date for a memorial service and flight schedules for out-of-towners.
Via group chat my siblings co-ordinated accommodations and car rentals. I added my information to the group.
My smartphone, in its place on the sideboard in my living room, contained everything and nothing I wanted to say to the grieving family.
At night, in the quiet of my small living room, I struggled to find the right words to convey my sorrow to my sister, the mother who lost her boy. I have no children, so I wanted to be cautious about what I wrote. “I can imagine how you feel.” Too presumptuous. “He’s out of pain now.” No consolation for the survivors. I scoured websites about suicide; how to show support for grieving family and friends, what to say or not to say. I needed a primer on appropriate behaviour.
My own response to the news oscillated over the days. I avoided people I knew. I felt woozy and concussed. I woke from dreams of jumping into black water. My knees buckled when I went for walks. When I’d encounter acquaintances who reflexively asked, “How are you?” I felt like I was running toward a chasm and had to leap as far as I could, over a deep fissure, to muster an obligatory, “I’m fine thanks.”
My smartphone buzzed notifications less and less as my flight out West to see my sister and her family neared. I had yet to phone or text her directly. Did she want to hear from me? Would my words be welcomed or intrusive? What words could I possibly offer that would soothe? Knowing someone who has died by suicide feels like standing on the edge of a cliff – being related to someone who has died by suicide feels like dangling over an abyss.
Eventually, I picked up my phone and typed a few words. It produced a corresponding emoji. In place of the word “care,” I saw a heart emoji. A big, red cartoon heart. A childlike condolence. The depth of my emotion reduced to a pictogram. But I could summon no words. This modern hieroglyph said it all. I sent the emoji to her, held the phone in my hand, and wept.
A minute later the phone blooped acknowledgment. Through tears, I marvelled at the reply.
A tiny heart back.
Carolyn Bennett lives in Brockville, Ont.